


Intent

by tnico



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alpha/Beta, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Beta!Lambert, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, alpha!Aiden, rude witcher man finds balance of both, rude witcher man holds hands, rude witcher man throws things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24086056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnico/pseuds/tnico
Summary: (5+1, A/B/O. Five presumptive motives, and the one Aiden's been entirely clear about all along.)"You think I don't know what you're after?" Lambert accuses."Well, I'd certainly hope you do, by this point in the evening," Aiden (so he says) agrees in a convincingly genial tone. It'd probably be enough to fool someone else on the matter of genuine interest.
Relationships: Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher)
Comments: 289
Kudos: 354





	1. Orient

**Author's Note:**

> oh boy another lambert-based a/b/o fic where i expound on complicating gender roles and probably nobody actually fucks on screen!! what a thing to be predictable for.

"You think I don't know what you're after?" Lambert accuses from where he's leaned himself against the wall, tilting his chin up to better accentuate the sneer.

"Well, I'd certainly hope you do, by this point in the evening," Aiden (so he says) agrees in a convincingly genial tone. It'd probably be enough to fool someone else on the matter of genuine interest. "You might not believe me, but I'm usually not this forward."

"Hah, _sure_ ," Lambert dismisses, pushing off from the brick and stalking the few steps over to where the man's positioned himself in front of him. Aiden's been holding himself like alphas do when they want to crowd you in, and like fuck is Lambert going to give him the jump on it if he's apparently so fucking eager for throwing his knot's-weight around even on betas. Opens up the options for bugging out if needed, too-- cities being what they are, you can't ever rely on yesterday's getaway route to not be tomorrow's choke-point.

He knows for sure he's gotten the actual-witcher's attention now, not just the knothead's ambient one, because he might be a beta but he's still a fucking predator here and he knows how to show it. Alphas and omegas both put so much power onto their extra level of pheromones, like they're all no level higher than fucking animals; just an extra level of hilarity, given Lambert keeps his company mostly to the actual animals and learned more about hijacking into the human instinct than anyone can through _designation_. (And the company tends to smell better, too.)

Spend any time on wilder roads with a horse and you know it's not the look of a predator that they're tuned-in to pick up, it's the movements of _predation_. Keep each step firm with your next move's intent. Keep your gaze steady. Keep your eyes locked where they're vulnerable most. Keep the plan in your head to fucking-kill-them-if-you-need-to (that you should've made already) at the forefront of your mind, because that shit'll read off you in that way that's more primal than words can compensate.

So Lambert might be a beta, but you don't actually need any fancy fucking pheromones to know a wolf in the wild's a threat. Aiden's back on his heels when Lambert halts his advance, nostrils flaring like there's anything to be scented from their new proximity than just Lambert-but-closer.

"Big tough alpha, huh." Lambert lets a mocking grin curl around the taunt and feels a sparking affront to get an answering grin in return, because usually around now's the time when flipping the script on the alpha should start making them get nervous.

"Never heard any complaints," Aiden replies, ducking his head in and pitching his voice lower. If he's trying to break Lambert's own advance with that move, it's a shit effort.

"I bet," Lambert near-coos, really pushing the sweet-bitter of burnt sugar into his tone, because they are apparently just going to keep ramping up into some fucking weird sexually charged stand-off but _actually_ if Lambert doesn't call the play now. "Yeah, I should be _so_ grateful, someone like _you_ going for someone like _me_."

Aiden just blinks at him, so Lambert decides hell with this and douses the act, going back to the sneer as he plants a palm flat on Aiden's chest to shove some proper distance back between them. "Or are we gonna pretend you alpha-assholes who go around riling up betas for the fucking tongue-bath are any less _pathetic_ for it than the ones who go around frighting 'em up for the ego trip?"

Aiden stumbles back at the shove, and Lambert has no fucking clue how he should be taking the blank face he's got on, so he (reasonably) assumes the worst and goes for broke. The straps on the shoulder of his gambeson are the sort of largely-purposeless decorative that nobody expects it when he pulls the buckle-knife. Hooking two fingers through it, he yanks it out and uses the momentum of Aiden's stumble to snake back into his space, resting the flat of the blade's tip against his collar-bone, not quite-as-aggressive as pressing it to the vein but angled purposefully enough to make the implication clear. "Yeah, _try_ me."

Lambert has expected that even a witcher wouldn't be able to keep his true reaction to a move like _that_ out of his eyes, so he's watching them for the contraction of the pupils, the spike of adrenaline. The adrenaline comes in clear, but he's _not_ expecting the pupils expanding, and wait, _that's_ a note to the scent you don't have to be tuned into alpha pheromones to get.

Lambert looks down.

"Why are you _hard_?" Lambert demands, with withering derision. It does not, however, seem to be doing much on the withering front in the matter that's (literally, he supposes) risen between them.

"You just pull the hottest move I've ever seen on me and then you ask why I'm _hard_ ," Aiden asks, and has the gall to sound incredulous.

Lambert makes an inarticulate noise of disgust and shoves him off, tucking the knife back into his collar and pointedly wiping his hands off on his coat where they made the brief skin contact.

"Then slum it with some other fucking beta, because I am absolutely never going to sleep with you," he declares, and stomps away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cliff notes for ya: [movements of predation](https://youtu.be/jaLor7d7NEs)
> 
> this'll just be short'n fun! or that's my intent, anyway. i was poking through rawrkinjd's fics after i liked their wolf lad poly one so much (go read! it's long but that's why it's good!!) and they had an a/b/o au with beta lambert and i of course went 'boy i bet he'd have him a complex either or' and then i had the story beats. like with denial, i'll be putting em out when the spirit takes!! 
> 
> probably less quickly my workload's kicked up
> 
> and i always love comments! if you don't wanna, you ain't gotta, but if you have something to say, please! i am. look. trying not to catch COVID and die. so bored, yes. any and all thoughts a blessing!


	2. Eye-stalk

"Keep pretending I haven't figured you out," Lambert accuses. He's feeling down the line of straps on his forearm sheaths to make sure none are twisted so he can keep his eyes up on Aiden.

Lambert is getting dressed, which isn't really something he's been used to doing in front of anyone but his horse since he got his own room post-Grasses (and hadn't _that_ been fucking great, staring at the ceiling and contemplating that yeah, of _course_ they could spare them each rooms now, what with _so few of them left_. Toss kids into the pyre and expect the survivors to be thrilled they get to play around in the ashes after, fuck _that_. What, so he indulged in some personal angst as a teenager. When you don't have to go through the apparently-never-ending drama of puberty as one of the seasonal breeders, you get a lot of time for inner contemplation.)

There's a vulnerability to being watched as he does, though he can't tell if it's from being naked around someone when he's no longer sex-stupid enough to compensate or Aiden getting a sense of where he keeps his _reasonable amount_ (Eskel can _fuck his goat_ ) of concealed weaponry should things ever come to a fight. Regardless, he doesn't like it.

He reflects on the folly of taking Aiden back to his room at the inn to fuck-- it'd seemed wiser, doing it in territory he'd had already scoped, but now he's stymied by the fact that Aiden doesn't seem inclined to go anywhere after. Therein the flaw: Lambert himself now cannot be the one to leave, as he has nowhere else he'd go but _here_.

"I'm not sure there's all that much more to figure out, really," Aiden replies in a contemplative tone from over on the bed. He'd wrapped the bedsheet around his shoulders like some sort of demented cape during the period of afterglow, and has yet to take it off now that the post-coital haze has been thoroughly expended and he's long supposed to have _taken off_. "I mean, if you take me _up_ on it there'll be quite a bit to figure out, clearly, but the offer itself--"

Lambert snaps the last button into place, flexes a fist to test the cinching, and uses his now-armed and freed-up hand to jab at Aiden and better accentuate the other kind of reaming out about to happen in this room, now. "Oh _yeah_ , _sure_ , because _that's_ a thing alphas fucking do, propose courtship to a beta because of _one good fuck_. And I'm sure the fact we're both _witchers_ has nothing to do with it."

"Okay, yes," Aiden agrees, like the amiability towards the accusation isn't fucking patronizing. "We are certainly both witchers. So what, ah, exactly would my scheme here be...?"

Lambert stares.

"Don't you give me that look," Aiden says. "It'd be helpful to have a starting point."

"You're _Cat School_ and I'm _Wolf School_ , you whoreson."

"I mean, you're not wrong there. Though I like to think the sum of people can be more than just adding up the parts, y'know?"

Lambert rolls his eyes and drops to the room's single chair so he can more easily strap on his ankle-sheath. "The _point_ is, sorry-not-at-all-sorry- _one_ -bit for all the wasted effort, _Aiden_ , because we lost the formulae for the mutagens when the School got massacred-not-by- _you-scuts_ -this-round. It's gone for-fucking-ever and good gods-damned riddance to it."

"Ah! All right, yes, now I'm on your page. Sorry about the, ah, first time around on that, by the way. Not that I had anything personally to _do_ with it, but I certainly understand why it'd be something of a sore spot."

" _Anyway_ ," Lambert presses, "No more witchers fucking _ever_. People are just gonna have to keep murdering their unwanted kids the same old hands-on way."

"Curses," Aiden says, "Then it seems I've been foiled. How many knives do you keep concealed on your person at any given time, anyway? In total, I mean, I'm honestly curious."

Lambert sneers at that, and then looks up so it might be clearly conveyed to Aiden that he is, in fact, sneering at that. "What a _stupid_ question," he says, becase he doesn't have the attention to spare while keeping an eye on Aiden to actually tally them at the moment, given he regularly abandons the cheaper throwers. "What, like anyone's suffered from being _over-prepared_ \-- fucking put my pillow down."

Aiden's flipping the rag-pillow Lambert uses on inn-beds as well as his bedroll (as he's the type to like the certainty of knowing when last his linens have been _washed_.) "You just seem like the type who'd even keep knives under--"

The cestus rolls out of the pillow's worn case and onto the bed. Aiden sets the pillow down to examine it. "You put that _back_ ," Lambert orders, straightening in the chair.

"Huh. I really thought it'd be a knife, all things given," Aiden says, as he continues to not put the cestus back.

"Well _that_ would be stupid, so near your own neck," Lambert snips, rising from his seat and stalking over to snatch his cestus from the alpha. "It gets unsettled from its sheath in the night and the wrong-ways turn in a nightmare flail'll fucking end you."

"I suppose it would! That's some imagery," Aiden reflects. He gives the cestus up without a fight, and even brings the pillow up again, holding the case open for him. It is, like the rest of Aiden's fucking act, entirely courteous and thus _infuriating_.

Lambert grabs his pillow back as well for good measure, and similarly meets no resistance. Aiden idly sniffs his hands. "What do you use on that, rose oil? Explains why your hair smells so nice."

"Do I look like I'm swimming in money, you ass? It's not _rose oil_ , it's just a phenol," Lambert corrects, setting the pillow back where it belongs.

"Smells like rose oil, though."

" 'Cuz it's the chemical that makes the oil smell like that, so? It's also in fucking coal tar. I know my way around zirconia, like I can't just oxidate some styrene and make some myself."

"Those sure were words you just said," Aiden replies agreeably. "So what's the phenol on your pillow for, if not to make you smell pleasantly like roses?"

"Keeps away lice," Lambert answers, hoping against hope the curtness will curb the follow-up. He is yet again failed, because Aiden chooses to respond with "Couldn't you just take a drop of black blood before you sleep and kill them off? That's what I've always done."

"And let them _lay their eggs_ on you?" Lambert says, feeling his face already twisting from the sympathetic (emphasis on _pathetic)_ revulsion.

"Ah. Well, yes," Aiden admits.

" _Disgusting_."

"A chemical, you said," Aiden presses on, examining Lambert's pillow with a new interest. Lambert does not immediately clutch his pillow defensively to his chest and demand Aiden just _get out already_ , because he is a grown-ass man and he's not going to let some fucking _alpha_ chase him into being chased out just because they fucked. "Neat trick! How'd you figure that one out?"

"I just _looked_ ," Lambert snaps, sitting heavily on the bed next to Aiden (and thus between the man and the pillow, because Lambert _sees_ the way he's looking at it and doesn't intend to let Aiden make off with his own fucking pillow any more than he is now-nonexistent witcher secrets.) "A sylvan told me she used spearmint leaves to keep lice off her legs, but they don't keep for shit and the oil itself wasn't strong enough to drive 'em _off_ , just keep 'em from _staying_ ," he recounts impatiently, reaching down to where he left his pack and flicking open the buttons. "So I took spearmint down to its chemicals best I could, and then just up and held 'em in front of lice until I found the one that made them start moving away. So there you go, phenethyl fucking alcohol," he holds up the slim vial, "If I give you some will you _leave_."

"No," Aiden shoots right back, and it's so non-combative in tone it actually takes Lambert a second to register the meaning. "And to think, just hours ago when you said what you did for fun was being left alone, I thought that meant you'd be boring! But you really have found your ways to keep occupied while on the Path, haven't you."

Lambert squints, because there's never anything good out of an alpha sounding like they're _intrigued_. "I said that because I was trying to get you to leave _then, too_ ," he points out meaningfully.

"No, that I knew right away. You just-- certainly have your own way of seeing things!"

Lambert bristles, because what is _that_ supposed to mean. "Fuck off, I do not. I see the same shit anyone else would if they just _bothered_. Anyone could have figured it out with a basic moonshiner's kit and a looking glass. It's just I'm not a complacent piece of shit over being a _living hatchery to parasites_ , so I actually go and fucking _look_."

"You might give yourself a bit more credit," Aiden says, leaning closer to him and smiling. "I learned alchemy as well as any witcher, but you seem to have really refined the talent."

"Ugh, that's _witcher alchemy_ for you," Lambert grouses, leaning back to rest against the wall to maybe get some more fucking breathing room from the whole smell-of-mingled-sweat-and-sex of the new proximity. "They might as well have taught that the same way as they taught us fucking _magic_ , for all the actual _method_ they imparted."

Aiden leans back too, which sort of defeats the entire purpose. "Alchemy and magic, though, is there _that_ much difference-- no, no, all right, touchy subject."

_"That is the most offensive thing you have ever said to me_ ," Lambert fumes.

Aiden is smiling at him. "Yes, Lambert. I can certainly see that."

Lambert scowls in response. "You're making fun of me."

"A little," Aiden admits. "You get so intent about some things, no matter the stakes. It's cute, y'know?"

" _Cute_ ," Lambert spits. " _Ugh_. That is such an _alpha bullshit_ thing to say, Aiden."

"A little," Aiden repeats, the slow tilt he's been on towards Lambert finally pressing them arm-to-arm, having maneuvered one of his out of his stupid sheet-cape. "I don't actually think a lot of alphas would find having their motives constantly questioned cute, though."

Lambert considers it while he's considering whether to just fucking throw Aiden off and then maybe out or not. "No, you've got me there," he concedes to both.

"And may I keep you?" Aiden asks. Lambert lets the reflexive scorn he feels to _that_ show on his face and serve as his answer. Aiden laughs. "Worth a try."

Then they both go quiet for a while, and it's actually kind of... nice, maybe, having a little living skin contact without expectation of further. Up until Aiden fucking _ruins_ it and says to the open air "You know, I wouldn't be _opposed_ to playing out 'naughty Cat witcher seduces sexy secrets out of noble Wolf boy', next time we end up in bed together."

"Fuck off, we're not ending up in bed again," Lambert snaps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cliff notes for ya:  
> aiden: who hurt you?  
> lambert: lol you wanna list  
> aiden: oh, do you have one? :) please.  
> lambert: do i-- what???
> 
> and footnotes!! yes, that bit about phenethyl alcohol is a thing!! [we've finally cracked that essential oils chestnut.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965174815300588)
> 
> i should mention, as a jew myself, my method for writing lambert is "just write the jewiest jew to ever jew their way out of jewniversity and then go back and then remove the explicit references bc yiddish uhhh, wouldn't exist." 
> 
> but seriously, look at some of them [good good jewish curses](https://yiddishradioproject.org/exhibits/stutchkoff/curses.php3) and then look me in the eye and tell me the lamboy wouldn't be one of us. you can't, he's ours. and like all good jews why yes i am _entirely_ willing to argue with you about it.


	3. Chase

"It's a fetish for you, isn't it," Lambert accuses. "Fucking me."

They're in a bath together, because even though Lambert repeatedly and at-volume told him _not_ to he went and bought an hour at a private room in the local bagnio _anyway_. What, he is not actually petty enough to let something go to waste if the _fucking wasteful thing has already been done_ , Lambert knows this about himself.

He is very much aware (and very much _resents)_ that Aiden apparently _also_ knows this about himself. He definitely needs to start making some distance between them after this, Lambert resolves. The proper kind, that will actually work.

Aiden just stares at him blankly. He's leaned back in the built-in tub, arms stretched over the rim of it and legs spread in that _unspeakably_ obnoxious ways alphas do, like it's their fucking _droit-du-fuck-you_ to monopolize the space. Given, the bathtub's more than big enough for the both of them (as well it _should be_ , for the fucking _price_ Aiden _paid_ ), but it's the _principle_ of the thing. Aiden's also left one of the smaller towels draped over his head, for some reason, which ruins any possible chance it'd even look intimidating anyway.

"I mean, kind of," Aiden finally replies, his tone agreeable. "I'm wild enough for you I'd probably give most anything at least a go, if you told me you'd be into it."

"Oh _ha-hah_ , go sell your bushel of steam and see how much _that'll_ get you at the market," Lambert mocks back acidically. "You gods-damn-well- _know_ I meant a fetish for fucking _betas._ "

"I really do wish you'd stop telling me all these things I know and start listening to the things I actually say on the matter, Lambert," is all Aiden has for an answer, shaking his head as he smiles.

"Take that towel off your head, you look like some sort of moldwarped radish spirit," Lambert snaps, instead of wasting their entire hour here on yet another iteration of _that_ fucking argument.

"Ah, that's a cute image," Aiden says, tugging the towel down to rest on his neck before using the end of it to wipe down his face. "Better?"

"No," Lambert sulks. "I'm still fucking a fetishist."

"I do have more serious intentions, Lambert. It's just whenever I bring them up you throw something at me."

Lambert scowls, the nearby bar of soap already gripped in-hand to be pitched in his direction. Aiden nods towards it meaningfully, and then starts waggling his eyebrows.

"You are _only_ getting away with that because if I throw this soap at you now it'll mean you've won," Lambert spits, attempting to pointedly slam the soap down back onto the little alcove where he'd snatched it from.

"Oh, believe me, I'm very much aware--" Aiden cuts himself off with a hiccuping, high-pitched cackle, because the bar of soap, being (obviously, in retrospect) a bar of soap, doesn't take well to being slammed down and rockets back to slam itself into Lambert's chest with apparent vengeance before an underwhelming fall straight into the bath with a dull plunk.

" _A general loss for me is not a win for you, you mealy-mouthed motherfucker,_ " Lambert snarls over the fit as he roots around underwater in an attempt to find the little _un-beraying-betraying-cause-of-all-this-fucking-braying_. Aiden, because he is a _bastard_ , just laughs louder and harder when he hears Lambert's grumbling, leaning over himself to nearly dunk his head face-first into the water. Lambert just gives up on the stupid fucking soap and takes the open invitation on the head-dunking, and then maybe they get a bit caught up in it, but who even gives a shit, they have the rest of the hour.

As that hour is winding nigh, they have to first sort through their assortment of clothes and equipment before they can get dressed. They'd come into the room already a bit caught up in it, and Lambert has instituted a requisite five minutes allotted for the clothes-sorting since the last time they had to basically toss a whole room to find where Aiden's other fucking glove had landed within half a minute at most or be charged for the whole next half-hour.

"I'd say you're wrong about it being a fetish, but you might be on the right track when you insist it's an alpha thing," Aiden contemplates, handing him his smaller punch-dagger.

"Hah," Lambert hisses, taking it and flipping it from its sheath one-handed so he can then gesture with it threateningly towards the other man. "I _knew_ it."

"Yes, yes," Aiden says, with what he feels is a frankly inappropriate amount of fondness in return for being brandished at with a knife. "Don't you look proud of yourself."

"I can and will shove this knife right up your alpha ass," Lambert warns waspishly as he sheathes it again and tucks it in his boot.

"We'd have to pay for another hour, love."

"At these prices? Hang _that_ on the gibbet, get your boots laced up," Lambert directs. They're on the way out, safely within limits (because Lambert _institutes his rules for good reasons, thanks_ ) when Aiden picks it up again. "I suppose it's those moments we have together like that. The last hour, just us," he muses.

It was a pretty good last hour, all told, so Lambert's content enough to let the man keep rambling. "When you're-- well, normally I'd call it 'vulnerable', but I can't say _that_ and you in a sentence and keep a straight face. It's more about... letting me have the access to these moments of _you_. Being trusted, in that moment, that I can also protect it. So it _is_ an alpha thing, probably," he concludes.

Lambert gives him a gimlet stare. "I'd still be like that no _matter_ my designation, Aiden," he states pointedly.

"You know," Aiden says, leaning over to sling an arm around his shoulder and knock the sides of their temples together companionably for a moment, "There's no doubt in my mind you really would."

Lambert waits for the follow-up for that, coiled for the response, which means he's taken off-guard when it's a complete departure in conversational direction.

"I keep telling you we should travel together! I'm entirely willing to foot the cost for a room at any town that has one."

Lambert shrugs the alpha's arm off, because he _really_ needs to get himself some time apart from Aiden. "You are beyond fucking head-addled if you think I will ever start travelling with you," he snipes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cliff notes for ya:  
> me, staring at the slowly melting wall, day %̴̡̡̗͕̺̝̞̙̮̬̳̟͈̳̍̂́̉̊̀͝#̴̛̬̟̮̞͋̒̾̈́̊̔̐́̂̈̕͠$̸̧̡̇ into shelter in place: the type of man who would look at lambert and go 'yes, that' is the type of man who would say "you dirty little anarchist" or "you absolute fucking goblin" and genuinely mean it as an endearment, wouldn't he
> 
> the woman in the wallpaper, swaying gently as she striates like a ripple on water into infinite swirling fractals: f̷̡̫̱͙̀͐̅̊̓̓͊̈́͋̕͝r̴̡̢͓̭̙̤̿͂͐̽̅̉̈́̈̎̓ͅa̴̩̜̳̼͂̕c̶̢͓͂̍̐͠ẗ̶̨̨͕͓̰̺̯̗̙͈͕͕̬̻͓̰͉́̑̏̈́̔͑̏̍͒͘̕į̶̦̠̖̼͎͓̻͈͔͑̈́͊̑̉̍̐͊̐̍̃͐̇̄́̕ő̷͓̘̋ǔ̸̪̪͖͓͉͍͂̊͛̑̎̆͠͝s̶̺̲̭̲̹̱͇̟̟̔̑̿̀̾͗̿̎̕ ̸̙̙͚̲͕̳͉̻̎̈͛͆̐̍͆̀̚f̴̡̡͓̲̦̤̱͇̠̭̙̦̘̥͉͔̄̆͋̌̑̅̄̆̍̆̆̅̚͜͝ę̷̙̩̭̈́̿̎̄̂̏̎̂͋͊͊̈́̄̕͠t̴̜͚͔͕͔̆̾̅̅i̶̛̞̣̲̯̟̩̞̯̯̿̒̐̎̿͠s̷̡͕͔̩͇̙̳̦̯͎̯̰̹̪͎̃̎͊͌̈́̅͋͋̏̆̓̌̏̎̌̕ḩ̸͉͚͖̩͑̀̒͒͝
> 
> me: lol ikr


	4. Grab-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one ended up a lot longer than the ones previous, so rather than waiting until i finished the whole thing i figured i'd split it! i do enjoy seeing people's thoughts on the story as it develops.

"I know your fucking game," Lambert accuses.

Aiden takes a long pull from the open jar of cordial before he responds. "Well, clearly you don't, if last night was any indication."

"Kambi is a _bullshit card_ and the day I win it from you, Aiden, oh what a day that will be, these words be my hot-brand aimed straight for _your ass_ , what a _day it will be_ ," Lambert rattles back immediately as he holds his free hand out, glowering.

Aiden obligingly passes back the jar. "You've got the whole day planned out already, haven't you."

"So what if I do," Lambert grumbles, knocking back his own mouthful while Aiden laughs.

The sharper bite to the air of winter-so-approaching means Lambert's been wending his ways up northwards on the usual circuitous route he takes to hit his usual caches. The surplus of liqueur jars he'd ended up with was an honest surprise; he'd made some real strides in stabilizing cream-based cordials to last in the last few years, but the spate of yogurt brews he'd left to age dotted around the upper reaches of Mahakan had mostly been about honest curiosity.

He hadn't actually thought any of his formulations for it would _work_ , but apparently he'd underestimated the challenge of further fermenting something already fermented, because beyond some minor congealing in some batches and a smidge of crystallization in some others they'd all turned out fine so far. Which meant he'd ended up with far more jars of what was only ever going to be some fucking novelty drink than he'd expected, and _far_ more than he was ever going to hock up the Killer with its relatively piddling alcohol content. (Liquids weighing what they do, he keeps his Keep haul to White Gull and only the best results of this year's rounds of novelty cordials.)

So they've been working their way through the surplus jars of the stuff as they go, which had been fine through the first jar but by the fifth of the same has become something more like a grim slog to the finish. It had gotten to the point where they had started doctoring the newest jar with some of the Gull to make the experience at least bearable, so they are both fairly tipsy by this point in the trek.

He usually tends to avoid getting cup-shotten when traversing the wilds, because he usually travels on his own and he has zero intentions of falling into some fucking ditch when overtaken and then having to suffer not only having to gnaw his own leg off to escape wherever he'd end wedged under but the further indignity of being hungover during the act.

It's one of the stranger side-effects he didn't expect out of traveling with company: the sense of reassurance; an _extra_ layer of personal security, as opposed to his initial expectation that it would be all frayed to shreds by having someone else (who wasn't his horse) to be constantly processing the presence of.

But their undeniable personal flaws as people gives a strange symmetry to the jags of their edges, in that they're different people in such an entirely fundamental way it's generally granted that in any situation only one of them will be fucking it up at any given time (meaning the other one can run counterpoise.) Might be more of a him-and-Aiden than just a traveling-with-company thing, even, now that he thinks of it.

"So! My game," Aiden prompts, holding a hand out.

Lambert points towards the northeast with his shovel as he passes the jar back over, where they'd be able to see the haze of the mountain range rising if they weren't deep in one of those quiet, deserted parts at the center of the forest. There's hardly even the movement of ambient insect life and the quiet's true suspension of noise that leaves no echoes of its absence.

"Entrance to Kaer Morhen. That's what it's all been leading to, hasn't it?"

Aiden considers this over the rim of the jar. "Wintering with you, do you mean?"

"Not _me_ ," Lambert corrects impatiently, "Kaer _Morhen_. Our fucking Stygga Castle. You know, the only base we have left after _your school_ drove us outta the Camp for good."

"You can't say the perpetrators didn't promptly pay their due, though," Aiden muses in between sips. "Certainly was an all-around mess."

"Hang the _Camp_ , Aiden, I'm talking about _Kaer Morhen_."

Aiden shrugs. "What about it?"

"You're not fucking getting in this winter, that's what it's about," Lambert snipes, leaning over to tug his jar back and grimace his way through a shot. "Chose the wrong target to shadow for it, jackass. If I brought back _anyone_ with me to winter it with Vesemir'd already suspect me of doing it specifically to fuck with him," (admittedly not _misguided_ for an impulse) "And ever since we lost the Camp he can't even have a conversation about any damn flea-bitten barn-mouser without launching into a parable about the treacheries of emotions. I bring you to the gate, he'd hear you out long enough that it takes him to slam the gate in your face, end of story."

"Mm," Aiden agrees amiably. "There certainly was a lot of dependence on entirely independent factors in that ultimate master-stroke of mine. I don't seem to be very good at this, to be honest. Put in a good word for me, though!"

Lambert squints at him, sloshing the contents of the jar as he jabs to emphasize he's pinned Aiden on his bullshit. "Oh, yeah, 'cuz _that's_ believable, you prinking puttock. 'I'm not trying to get into Kaer Morhen!', he says, and then he goes straight for my brothers."

"Certainly," Aiden makes a so-so gesture in the air. "I'm explicitly trying to get in good with them, if I can. They _are_ the closest thing you have to a family, and all."

Lambert feels his fingers tighten around his jar, bringing it closer in to his chest. "What? What is _that_ supposed to mean," he demands.

"The same thing it always does," Aiden says with a sigh, and then raises his head and smiles. He holds his hand out for the jar.

Lambert regards him for a long, suspicious moment, eyes now narrowed to slits about perpendicular to the pupil-ones. Aiden just keeps smiling patiently and holding his hand out and not fucking clarifying. He'd ask, but then he'd have to _ask_. Finally, grudgingly, he hands the jar back over, grumbling out "Then why the _fuck_ have you been heading northwards?"

" _You're_ going to Kaer Morhen, Lambert."

Lambert gestures exasperatedly in the air. " _Yes,_ " he says, "I _know_. Which is _why your game is--_ "

Aiden rolls his eyes in tandem to tilting his head back to drink. "You're focusing on the wrong part of the sentence there, love. Really, you'd think I might have proven my faith in my feelings by the fact that I've been going halves on yet another of these jars for you. Why can't we just toss it, anyway?"

Lambert reaches over to grab the jar. "I have a hell of a time keeping weight on when I winter, I'm not tossing anything that'll help me pack some on," he says, and attempts to summon the grim determination for another sip.

"Huh," Aiden says, "I thought it was just another one of your stubbornness things."

Lambert considers this. "No, it might also be a stubbornness thing," he admits after due thought.

"Might! Well, you can count me out for the rest, then."

"What!" Lambert exclaims. "So much for your fucking faith!"

Aiden crosses his arms and shakes his head with a firm new resolve. "Not another drop from me. I'll indulge your stubbornness because it's cute," he declares. "Your thriftiness, however, is simply tolerable." He makes a face. "Ugh, I won't be able to stomach any more yogurt for _months_."

" _Fine_ , then," Lambert sulks, turning away. "I'll drink it myself."

"That's the plan," Aiden agrees, with a frankly _insulting_ level of cheer, "You do that."

Lambert scowls as he vengefully knocks back the rest of the jar's contents. Then has to gasp for breath and press a hand to his chest, because oh fuck, he'd forgotten they'd doctored it with that much White Gull.

"You forgot we'd been putting all that White Gull in there, didn't you," Aiden says, reaching out to rub at his back while he breathes.

"No," Lambert rasps out petulantly, leaning in to the hand to help with the swaying as it continues to hit him. "I _didn't_."

Aiden sighs. "You're lucky the stubbornness is cute, love," he admonishes, reaching down with his free hand to his waterskin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next part incoming: the murder jar


	5. -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me this morning: i will definitely reach the murder jar when arranging my draft today!
> 
> me now: i have assembled the largest chunk i have of this story and _still haven't reached the actual murder jar_
> 
> i'm posting it anyway, though! as much as i like nice neat chapters i get more enthusiasm the more momentum i have, so shorter updates more often seems to be working to get it going!

They're holding hands now, because Lambert knows where they're going but Aiden is steadier on his feet. It's not the sort of open physical intimacy Lambert usually allows, in public like this. Anyone would be able to tell their relative designations, if they got close enough. 'In public' this moment, however, is still miles away from anyone else's eyes and noses, being in the middle of a forest and all.

So Lambert lets Aiden link their hands, even if he's not really all that near stumbling-drunk from his partaking too fast. He's still _drunk_ , anyway, and feeling warm and loose and like maybe holding Aiden's hand would be all right, just if they're out here, just while he's already pretty drunk.

"I just don't understand how you remember where you left all these little squirrelholes of yours off the top of your head," Aiden comments, when Lambert takes a hard right at the third marker tree.

" _Squirrelholes_ , go kiss a bloedzuiger. No, I marked the trail to 'em. I've been waiting to see when you'd finally spot it."

"And I've been trying!" Aiden defends, though the manufactured affront falls short by how he's started swinging their hands companionably between them. "It's definitely something to do with the trees, you never look down when you take a turn, but I've been looking and looking for a mark or a carving or paint or _anything_ and still they just look like trees, to me."

Lambert snickers, butting his head against Aiden's shoulder before tugging him back toward his marker tree. "And that's why you'll never get it," he says, "C'mon, then, last cache and all. I'll show you."

He leads them back to the oak. It's a good one for the demonstration, all told: the short rise of the thick trunk's initial growth, the sudden perpendicular angle it takes to the side for a spate, and then jagging right back to rising vertically-as-normal. The briefly-horizontal chunk of the zagged trunk is close enough to the ground and has grown in more than sturdily enough it could serve just fine as a bench, so Lambert, accordingly, drops down onto it. He gestures to his new seat meaningfully.

"The-- it's an arrow, isn't it," Aiden says, glancing over to the direction they'd just come from. "The _tree itself_ is the-- Lambert," he disentangles their fingers to rest his palm on the bark of the old oak. "You searched all those forests to find trees like this? That's-- that must have taken you ages."

He sounds downright incredulous, which Lambert laughs at, shaking his head. "It did but it didn't," he says dryly, leaning forward, "It took me maybe two days all in total. I just spaced 'em out in annual chunks."

Aiden looks from the marker tree to Lambert in continued confusion. "Aiden," Lambert laughs again, holding his hand out. Aiden takes it, tugging him back to his feet. Lambert winds their fingers together again while he teases "Do you think trees just materialize, fully formed, out of the aether?"

"I certainly don't think much about how trees get where they are, to be honest!" Aiden admits, looking back at the tree and then to Lambert. "That's-- it was you? You shaped them, somehow."

"Hah! Somehow, he says. Rope with some give for the year-growth and a stake," Lambert confirms, "Works better on oak than it'll ever do a fucking vampire, I know that much." He rubs his free hand fondly over the lopped-off nob of the skinny first-growth trunk. He can't say he doesn't have a strange and inordinate fondness for the things, which he attributes to the regularity of his annual visits and direct influence on their early upbringing.

"Lambert," Aiden marvels, "That's brilliant." He's smiling down at Lambert again, but he's doing it in that painfully alpha way he does sometimes. It helps that he does, honestly. It's almost-- easy to forget, with how constant his scent and presence has become at Lambert's side, that there's such a fundamental divide between them.

Then Aiden will smile at him about something and there'll be an edge to it that's fucking _hungry_ , possessive and wanting, and Lambert isn't fucking _stupid_ , he notices _every fucking time_ the way any seasonal breeders in sniff-range will flick their eyes over to Aiden and _know_ whatever the _fuck_ it is they can all pick up off of him that Lambert can't and won't _ever_ and then they'll always, _always_ look at _him_ next with nostrils flaring to check for sure because surely-he-can't-actually-be-a and then when they realize _yeah, asshole, he surely fucking is_ the _look_ in their eyes--

It really is easier to be smiled at like that when it's just them, miles deep into a forest with nobody else around, he thinks. Unsurprising, all given. (He's not that fucking stupid. He can see the shape of the pieces, even if he'll never let them make their picture.)

That thought (like the looks) is not easy _at all_ to take, so instead: "Only fault in the system is that it's _too_ fucking subtle, really," he ruminates, giving the nob a final pat. "People cut 'em down sometimes without knowing what they're cutting down. There's a little hunting outpost in Sodden they set up a handful of years ago I'll never forgive. Cut down not-one-but- _two_ of mine to set it up. Twenty years I'd put into those, pain in my ass. But such is the cost of being so very good at hiding," he concludes, "People don't even realize the value of what they got their hands on."

"Mm," Aiden agrees, smiling, as Lambert leads them back the direction he grew the tree in to point towards. "You've certainly relied on that."

"Remembering where last I laid the pit traps, that's off the top of my head," Lambert notes, because he's drunk and he's feeling good and he wants to think about easy things, now. He does always like a good pit trap. "Those don't tend to stay deep more'n a handful of years, though, so I never set anything up for that but tracing my own tactics. The best place for a pit trap'll generally still be the best place for a pit trap in a decade, after all."

"Those pit traps of yours," Aiden sighs, "I never had the patience to dig them out, myself."

Lambert starts up the swing between their hands again in a jerking motion. "Why would I _dig_ a pit trap, Aiden," Lambert points out, tossing his eyes back disdainfully. "I have _controlled explosives._ "

Aiden laughs, loud and bright. "Ah, well! That's certainly one way to get it done."

They continue in silence for a bit, navigating over the darkened dips and shapes of the old-growth terrain to keep to their direction. "What's the shovel for, then? None of your other caches were buried."

"This one is," Lambert says, bouncing the shovel idly from where he's rested the shaft on the shoulder not bumping companionably into Aiden's every once in a while. "It was my first one, you know. Before I realized how much I actually hate digging, but s'an extra security."

Aiden perks up at that, because _of course_ he does, the fucking Cat. "Extra security?"

Lambert nods. "I keep the most important thing I have in there."

"Aha," Aiden mirrors his nodding, though with far more general eagerness. "Any chance for a hint?"

Lambert considers, humming a few bars of a half-remembered bylina before he begins. "Far off in the middle of the ocean, there's a magical island hidden in the clouds-- and on that isle a green oak tree, and buried underneath it an iron chest, and when opened from within it will spring forth a hare--" he narrates.

"First time I heard that tale it was magic island, then a pond, then in a hollow log," Aiden interjects. Lambert sifts through his drink-softened memories of fireside tales overheard from doorways and through walls.

"Up to the iron chest, it's pretty all-over," Lambert agrees, before sliding back into the storyteller's cant, pronouncing carefully to get around the drunkenness. "--and when you have caught the hare, what lies within is a duck, and within the duck an egg, and within the egg a needle-- and only through the eye of the needle will you find my dread heart, and only with that heart in hand may you ever fucking manage to see me slain," he finishes with a flourish, grinning.

Aiden smiles back at him, squeezing their hands. "Is that what I'd do with it?"

Lambert barks a laugh. "What else is there to do? You're not a _quail_ , Aiden, you won't absorb my venomous nature if you eat it."

Aiden blinks. "Quails do that?"

Lambert tilts his head back. "Quails do that," he confirms. "When they're migrating, at least. Eat a bunch of poisoned plants on the way and somehow it toxifies their meat enough to kill any beast or human dumb enough to eat a migration-quail. What, didn't you learn that from the Cats?"

"I did not," Aiden says, sounding mystified. "Is that one of the things you learned from the Wolves?"

"No," Lambert says, "But given how long it lasts in the meat even pickled, I always thought it'd be a good way to do a subtle assassination. You think the school that actually does assassinations would have thought of it."

Aiden chuckles, shaking his head in that markedly obnoxious way of his that looks more like it's at Lambert himself than what he'd just finished saying. "What," He snaps, "I'm not saying I'd _ever_ , Aiden of, may-I-remind, School of the _Cat_ , I'm just saying it'd _work._ "

"I'm just struck by your thought process at times, that's all."

"It's basic shit," Lambert scoffs, hooking his shovel off his shoulder to wave it in the air in a general frustration. "There is just so much out there no one even _bothers_ with, I swear."

"It might be more that it didn't occur to them in the first place, love."

Lambert drops the shovel back on his shoulder to give Aiden an irritated grimace of disbelief. "How could it _not?_ It's all right-the-fuck _there_ if you just _look_."

Aiden's only answer is a hum which tells him nothing and a redirection of subject. "Where'd you learn all that extra alchemy of yours, anyway? Your alcohols and jars and bird-based poisoncraft. No Wolf taught you, that I'm sure of."

"Sure as shit did not," Lambert agrees, reaching out to tap the marker tree and turn their direction, shooting Aiden a grin. He'd never actually told anyone about the trees before, given their purpose-- wasn't even sure he was going to let Aiden in on them, really, until he'd downed more than his share of White Gull.

But it's kind of nice, having someone know what it means when he pats one of his trees, someone who knows and sees it and then grins back. Feels good like their inside jokes do, but warmer in his stomach (which admittedly might just be all the recently-imbibed White Gull.)

It's that grin back, and the still-being-pretty-drunk, and the two of them all alone out here that does it, he thinks. This is hardly the first time Aiden's asked around that question, but he decides he's already leading Aiden on the way to the needle-egg-duck-hare of him, so he might as _well_.

He starts to roll the shovel back and forth from where it's resting on his shoulder, attempting to assemble an explanation for something he's not ever really had the personal incentive to explain. Aiden, seemingly picking up on his proximity to one of those never-ending-stream of answers he's always prodding Lambert for, has gone quiet as the two of them continue the trek.

"I got tithed-in from a poor family, you know? Shit-poor," he starts. It'd have been easier all-around if any actual money he and his mother got their hands on didn't get thrown down the fucking bottle, but even then he hadn't been starry-eyed enough to think even if their prayers were ever answered on that front it'd have been anything like _easy_.

"Soon as I got big enough that I could I was rat-catching around the barns in the winter 'cuz you only had to bring in the tails to get the coin and that meant lunch was covered too, _that_ kind of shit-poor. My mom, since so long as I'd known, she canned damn near anything she could get her hands on that she could. Never knew when we'd have to make it stretch. Just how it was."

Aiden's keeping quiet while Lambert recounts, which is rare for him in general but not so much in the rarer moments. "So we call it alchemy when it's fucking with chemical salts over an alembic, but it's just as much the same rules of alchemy when you're fucking with chemical salts over a wood-stove. More than witcher shit is, even, 'cuz killing humans upon consumption means it got done wrong, not the _given_."

"Most of the time," Aiden finally cuts in, starting their joined hands up swinging again. Lambert hadn't noticed it'd come to a stop. "I'm never eating quail you've prepared if I think you've cause to be mad at me, by the way. I know your tricks, now."

Lambert tosses his head back to compensate for the rocking force of his own unexpected laugh at the thought of the path ahead, the green oak and buried-at-its-roots the iron chest. "You don't even know half my tricks."

"True," Aiden agrees, "More of them tucked away under there than you even have knives." He elbows Lambert in the side, where, all right, there is in fact a sheath, but Aiden doesn't get credit for knowing that when he was the one who'd given it to him.

"What makes it so different from magic, then? Your type of alchemy," Aiden continues, and unlike the previous it's an unexpected question. Yet unlike the previous question, the answer's immediate on his tongue, one of those things he's never consciously directed thought to but just had been a given.

"Rules," Lambert replies. "Consistency. Known factors."

Aiden raises his eyebrows. "Known factors! I've always thought magic made more sense, honestly."

"In the larger way," Lambert agrees. "It's-- it always makes sense through the eyes of people, and people generally see things the same in the larger way. But get any deeper and it's anything fucking goes, because any deeper than that and _nobody_ sees it the same. And that-- it all counts," he's a bit frustrated at the inadequacy of his language to express it, but there's an undeniable benefit from talking this with another witcher. Aiden's nodding like he gets it, at least.

"Mm. I think I get it. If only in the larger way," Aiden confirms, and Lambert can't help the answering laugh to his grin.

"Alchemy's the opposite," Lambert says with a nod. "Makes no sense at all, in the larger way. Anything goes, and sometimes stuff will fucking happen and your only answer is 'well, that's how stuff just fucking happens', and you never learn a whit more as to why. And it doesn't have shit-all to do with people and how they see. Not ever. Never does. Refreshing, really."

"But if you can actually pin down the fucking _rule_ it's working by, as senseless and unrelated-to-any-people as it is-- that's it. You've actually got it. Anything fucking goes rules-wise, but when you've gotten down what the rule _is_ it'll anything-fucking-go the same way _every time_. Find me a spell that can say that," Lambert ends, though it comes off as more satisfied than resentful.

"Known factors," Aiden considers thoughtfully. "Makes sense."

"Best thing about 'em," Lambert agrees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next section FOR SURE probably: the murder jar (NO WORRIES IT STAYS CLOSED)
> 
> special wink to star_flaming for connecting the liqueur brewing to the larger alchemy (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧
> 
> it occurs to me i should be linking the references i make! thus:  
> [marker trees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_trees) are a real thing! you can still find them throughout north america, though the natural life cycle and people unaware they're not just very odd trees has reduced much of their numbers.  
> [it is said, on the mythical isle of buyan...](https://fairytale.fandom.com/wiki/Koschei_the_Deathless)  
> yes, [death by coturnism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coturnism) is a real thing! we've been aware of it since antiquity, and we're aware of at least three different strains of migratory toxification, but so far as i know even still no one's actually puzzled out the precise quail-mechanism behind it. somebody get on that, i'm curious!!


	6. -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *holds head in hands* so about getting to,
> 
> i have never done a 5+1 before and hooooo boy have i learned a lesson here about having the first parts largely worked out and the back parts largely a coherent-enough pile of scenes and concepts with the pacing to be worked out later. because WOW i knew chapter 4 would be back-heavy but this back-heavy was honestly not planned
> 
> to be clear when i teased the murder jar next time the first time i literally didn't know it WOULDN'T be next time because i am in fact quite new at this BUT i have literally no other character development left TO cover but the actual fucking point of the chapter so i will SAY next installment we're there but then again i obviously CANNOT BE TRUSTED,,,,,, 
> 
> basically i think i have to just give up on making this a nicely paced lil package like denial and am just going to write for the vibes now however they may sprawl. chapter 4 apparently never ending is the vibes now, i'm declaring it and in my mind kingdom _i make the rules_
> 
> edit: AAAAAAH ALMOST FORGOT cw for the briefest, most oblique reference to suicide

They're not that far from Lambert's cache when Aiden asks. "Which parts of it did you learn from your mother?"

"Not even bothering to be subtle now, are you?" Lambert grouses, but he can't summon much bite to it. "First you get a man drunk, then it's right on to winkling out his secrets--"

"Sweetheart," Aiden chides, though it mostly comes off like fondness, " _I_ didn't get you drunk. _You_ got you drunk."

Lambert can't actually counter that, further un-helped by the all right, _fine_ , admittedly-self-imposed drunkenness still currently in play. "Don't call me that," he retorts instead. Aiden nods in apology but doesn't let it distract him from continuing to look at Lambert expectantly for an answer.

"She taught me that so long as you're near the woods or you're near the water, only reason you'd ever starve is 'cuz you're picky, that's most of what she taught me," he answers, pushing a low-hanging tree-branch out of the way with his shovel as he gestures to the forest around him, abundant as always. "Used to send me out a-foraging for edible plants during the seasons and then she'd can and dry the lot of it."

"That's where you learned all that non-poisonous-plant-lore of yours? My going theory was you learning it from a witch, not a homemaker."

Lambert turns to eyeball him incredulously. "Much! Why a _witch?_ "

It's Aiden's turn to gesture at the surrounding forest, apparently. "It's hardly my fault, Lambert. They sound like the sort of things you'd put in a witch's brew! All with the horse's tails and fiddler's heads and hen's teeth and death's nettle and goose's feet--"

"Horsetails, fiddleheads, henbit deadnettle, goosefoot," Lambert runs the immediate correction alongside Aiden's painful flailings. "Come on, you wantwit, you already managed to memorize advanced alchemical formulae, I don't see why this is so hard."

"I'd probably remember them like I do the formulae if you started hitting me across the knuckles every time I recite it wrong, though," Aiden muses, holding his hands up to contemplate the backs of them. Lambert leans over to give them a look as well. There's no one else around to see, and he's always liked Aiden's hands.

"Maybe I should start, then," Lambert considers, reaching over to run a finger contemplatively across Aiden's scarred knuckles, pausing at the one wonky oval of stretched skin healed over potion-quick. "Forest hasn't failed _me_ in spates of famine so far."

"At least I'll never forget that man can eat a daylily," Aiden sighs, turning one of his hands to squeeze Lambert's own before he drops them. "I was absolutely enchanted with how excitedly you pelted towards that forest field of them up until the immediate moment you stuffed the first flower into your mouth."

"Fuck off, they're best when they're young," Lambert shoots back, tart.

"Are we just switching the batches out like the others, then?"

" _We_ , he says. Look at the tag-a-long here, think he's getting uppity," Lambert mocks to the open air, shaking his head like a disapproving instructor.

"Laaaambert, I hauled your pack, too!" Aiden whines, gesturing to Lambert's back. "And I helped with this round of jars! _And_ you won't even let me try any of your aged-in batches, _even_ though I helped you--"

"Winter goes by rule of the ant, grasshopper. You didn't help me with those, you don't get to try those," Lambert reasserts firmly, the tread of this argument almost as familiar now as the start of the path to his cache, albeit within a disconcertingly shorter time-frame. "I told you and I'll tell you again, I'm not trading in _pickle futures_ when I could die on the job at any given time. You helped with these jars, so you can have some when we come back _next year_ and not a damn moment sooner."

Aiden's complaints die immediately, which doesn't happen often. He's also grinning, which very much does. It feels almost like he's handed Aiden a win, even though all his jars remain closed.

"All right. Next year," Aiden hums. "I can handle that."

Aiden's silent for all of a moment before it's apparently on again with the leading questions. "You certainly pick and choose when it comes to what you pickle and jar, though." It's a real diplomatic way to put the various iterations of weird shit Aiden skeptically helped him salt and stuff into a jar for this round.

"Mostly it's trade goods," Lambert agrees, but now he's not really thinking about it, because the implicit promise of his own _next year_ just caught him sideways and he's rolling that in his mind instead. He should probably keep talking to cover for it, it's not like he doesn't know there'll be follow-up questions, because Aiden's not the only one who's picked up on the patterns of his--

(-- _Not_ his partner, not his _anything_ , not his _fucking anything_ , and _especially_ -not-his--)

\--Friend. No, his traveling companion. Traveling _associate_ , it's not like Lambert ever _asked_ him to follow. Follower, now there's the word for it. His _follower_ , and not even _his_ follower, just a follower in general, clearly, and who's ever even heard of an alpha worth their knot who followed behind _anything_. And he'd clearly follow _anyone_ , really, what with how apparently-keen he's been following _this_ fucking dead end to its eventual open grave of a finish. So honestly, it's even an insult.

Then Aiden nudges him gently with an elbow and Lambert suddenly has to scrabble back to the present and try to remember if Aiden actually did the follow-up-questioning during his sudden need to solve the semantical diversion.

He can't actually tell, so now he _has_ to push ahead and answer like it's been asked, just to cover over the slip. Usually Lambert saves dwelling over definitions to the rare-and-getting-rarer moments nowadays that Aiden isn't around, but it's been happening more often with the actual man, lately. He doesn't know what that means, and if he knows anything about unknown factors, it's that knowing nothing about them is infinitely more dangerous than being fully aware of unpleasant eventualities.

"Trade goods," he repeats, forced out suddenly, and it sounds distant even to him, so he clears his throat and half-turns to rummage in the hauling pack, letting his mouth run on the familiar topic of his brothers until he starts sounding more like himself again. "Mostly. Need something to bet with over the winter, right? So we got here, see, some sour berbercane cordial here for Eskel, because he is a man of culture and refined palate, some sweet pickled walnuts for Geralt, because he by contrast is a dirty cave troll who willingly feeds on those hand-staining-formaldehyde-stinking little abominations--"

He's talking too fast, because all he's been fucking talking about otherwise are him-things and he doesn't _talk_ about him-things (and who would even ask, anyway?) (and why does he _keep asking?_ ) (and what does he--) (and when he--) (and _will_ \--) (and _he_ \--)

He's drunker than he realized, maybe, with the fractured thoughts and the sudden-onset nauseousness. But if Lambert has learned anything from decades-on of working his profession of not-actually-choice, it's how to compartmentalize.

Aiden, he knows, goes somewhere high enough the fall would kill you and sits on the edge of it and won't talk to anyone (not even to tell Lambert to go away when he sits there too for a while, contemplating how small the movements of people are when seen from a good distance and wondering if that's what Aiden likes about it or if it's that other thing and never, ever asking.)

Meanwhile, Lambert's own method generally involves talking shit about other people's shit until he starts buying into his own shit and then stops feeling so shitty about it. And if there's one thing Lambert knows he can do even when he's bleeding out in a ditch, it's talk shit. He doesn't even have to think about it. (Doesn't even need to _talk_ for it, really, as enough seasons spent around only those with mutant-freaky long-distance vision gives a man unique opportunity to cultivate some truly sarcastic body language.)

Lambert's still going off on whatever-the-hell about the various _fucking rude_ nut-eating habits of Geralt-- (he generally defaults to talking shit about Geralt when he needs to make some space between him and the seasonal breeders, given whether out of competition or courtship that'll be where their interest lies) when he feels a squeeze around his hand. He grinds to a sudden halt, jerking his head down to look. Aiden's started holding Lambert's hand again, though Lambert can't actually remember when he took it.

He jerks his hand from Aiden, wiping his palm on his jacket like Aiden's the one whose palms have broken out into the cold-sweat. "It's-- nothing. M'drunk," he mutters, and then to the question Aiden's just outlined through all the careful not-asking of it answers "Just a me-thing."

Usually this is where Aiden backs off, but maybe the miles of solitude around them and Lambert's drunkenness have emboldened more than himself, because he goes for Lambert's hand again and says, smiling, "If I've learned anything from being with you, Lambert, it's never just nothing when it's a you thing."

And that's--

Lambert doesn't pull his hand away this time until Aiden breaks the sudden silence, leaning over to peer into the opened bag. "Ah, let's see. So the pickled grapes, the hop-shoots, the cockles, and the raspberry mustard-- you're going to have to tell me if that one actually works out next year, I'm desperately curious-- those are for you?"

Lambert feels a sudden and powerful urge to clutch the bag to his chest and hiss defensively, of the sort he really thought he'd gotten over at least when they'd started fucking on the regular, so he settles for irritably twitching the bag back shut. "I _never_ said--"

"Process of elimination, love," Aiden points out, still achingly, unbearably gentle. He rests his hand atop Lambert's, and all Lambert can do is stare down at Aiden's hand. "Everything else was for someone else."

"It's not-- I don't-- like them," he says, but he doesn't pull his hand away, staring at the oddly shiny shape of that scar between two of his knuckles. Lambert had been there for that one, pinker and more recent, and the simple knick had been irrelevant to the larger and much-more-important-at-the-time stomach wound but got all hopped-up and over-healed itself because potions aren't discriminate.

And he's here with a man whose guts he's literally held in, feeling like spilling his metaphorical guts over a can of cockles is showing too much of his own heart's. "It's not about liking. I just go for novelty, that's all," he says, still staring at the scar. "Add a little interesting to a diet of much the same."

Aiden doesn't move his hand, but he does lean to the side, pressing his arm against Lambert's. He's quiet for a long while, and Lambert's suddenly struck with the sudden memory of sitting shoulder-against-shoulder on the bed the first night they met.

And just like the night they first met, it is immediately followed by him _ruining it_ , because he makes a noise in his throat and dimples like he does when he's trying very, very hard not to laugh.

Lambert jerks back with an actual hiss. "What!" he accuses, and the settling back into the familiarity of being deeply affronted is an absolute balm, after all the stumbling-around-blind he'd just been desperately trying to not let on about (and clearly failing.) Much like talking shit, this, at least, he knows.

"I'm sorry," Aiden chokes through his pitiful attempts to get a handle on his conniptions. "I'm sorry-- Lambert, I'm really _trying_ not to-- you just, just, the fact that it's been _so much_ easier to get my cock into you _regularly_ than it's been to get you to tell me your _favorite food_ , it's just--"

"And you're not getting any more of your cock into me if you keep up with that shit," Lambert threatens venomously, but Aiden's long-past his tipping point into full dissolution to mirth at this point.

When things have settled, all that tension that'd made everything in the moment seem vital punctured like a pigsbladder, Lambert grumbles "There isn't anything, anyway," shouldering the bag and turning towards his tree.

"Isn't any what?" Aiden asks, straightening out his jack-of-plate as he trails behind.

"I don't have a-- anyway. With food. I don't do favorites."

"You make it sound like a philosophical choice, love."

"Isn't it? There's a reason I don't bother to name my fucking horses."

At that, Aiden's suddenly alongside him, wearing a frown. "That's-- Lambert, that's hardly the same thing."

Lambert snorts derisively. "It is. Why would I willingly attach myself to shit that anyone could take?"

Aiden doesn't answer for a long while, and Lambert had been _entirely_ happy to let this conversational direction die, so he doesn't expect the quiet response of "It doesn't have to be like that."

Which is such an _alpha bullshit_ thing to say, but the space between them feels too tenuous for butting heads over dynamics, and Lambert's feeling too raw to risk--

Well, nothing.

(It's a philosophical choice.)

Lambert decides he'll take that comment to be about food, so instead of addressing it, he gestures to all around him. "Forest hasn't failed me in famine so far," he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cliff notes for ya:
> 
> ♡ ( ˘︶˘ )╯character imagine: you and lambert are walking in a forest. you stumble across a small clearing, a little oasis where the sun and warmth reaches. that'd be enough of a pleasant contrast to the cool darkness of the old-growth trees around you and the perpetually moist loam you've been trekking through just on its own, but there clearing's absolutely flooded with a riot of spring-fresh daylilies straining towards the sun. the rust-oranges and golds of the flowers and young-greens of their leaves in the sunlight are a blessing to the eyes after the long, muted darkness, but more than that it's a blessing to see lambert exclaim gleefully and bound towards the patch. there's something open and honest to his excitement you don't usually see-- only when the two of your are alone like this, those spaces you can make for him where he can be certain wearing his heart on his sleeve doesn't make it a target. it's with a warm, building fondness you watch him pick through the flowers, reaching out to brush at their petals and smiling. He plucks one and turns to you, grinning, and in that moment you are nearly knocked-over by the power of your sudden urge to seize this world at its foundations and strain until you've made a space where he could always feel free to smile at you like this. you then watch him take that daylily he just picked and stuff the entire flower into his mouth, tearing it straight from the stem to then chew. you continue to stare. why is he like this, you wonder, as he turns back and starts eating his second flower. why does he do these things. you just don't know why you're still surprised with his shit at this point, really you don't.
> 
> oh! and footnotes!  
> [rule of the ant in winter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ant_and_the_Grasshopper)  
> cockles was a stealth pun you may have missed-- in english, we use the phrase 'cockles of my heart' to indicate being filled with emotion, because the ventricles (the bottom, basically) of the heart has a distinctively ridged appearance much like a cockleshell! english sure is cute sometimes.


	7. -bite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *stumbles into the chapter notes*
> 
> *collapses on the floor*
> 
> it's...... finally done......... goliath is defeated.......... and it only took me three goddamn times of saying we'll get there and being WRONG before we got there. it's going to be weird to go back to my chunks of the next two chapters. who am i, even, without chapter 4 to wrestle with??
> 
> *raises head* also! if you liked denial, anoke did a lovely prequel piece! go read! *collapses again*

One more turn at a marker-tree and the two of them come to a halt in the small, curated clearing. "And here we are."

"Ah!" Aiden explains, looking up the thick-trunked, twisted oak that dominates the small space, the splaying branches layered with ferns growing thick atop them in tandem with the oak itself. "And it's actually a green oak!"

"Wasn't always, but surely is now," Lambert agrees, using the shovel to push away the mulch that's built up around its roots where the chest is buried. The actual digging's quick work, all told; there's no warm-blooded creature that makes a home in the area for miles, so it's not like the earth gets packed down all that much during the rest of the year.

Aiden helps him lift the chest, which is another unexpected benefit of having a constant, uninvited tag-along, because it's massive as always. They drop it on the earth next to the hole and the piled dirt and Lambert fancies he can feel the woosh over his boots of suddenly-displaced air from the heavy impact of its landing.

"And now an actual iron chest," Aiden says, with something too open and amiable to be proper suspicion. "I swear by Melitele, Lambert, if an actual hare pops out of that--"

"Iron, hah! No. Koschey was downright asking for it if he was burying his iron in damp soil and expecting _that_ to end well for him, that's what I say," Lambert laughs, as he leans down to peel off the grimy beeswax cappings he uses to keep dirt out of the hafts. "Me, I go with a kobold alloy. Better against rust."

Lambert hefts the lid open and gestures inside the chest to the contents before he drops to his knees. "See? No hare in here."

There's the usual line of amber-glass sealed jars, stamped at the top to indicate their murky contents. There's _also_ the separate, heavily-decorated strongbox in which he keeps his murder jar, which he assumes has seized Aiden's interest by now, as distinctive as it looks. He'd ended up going for as unsubtle as he could make it, in the end.

"You know," Aiden says lightly after a long moment, "When you said your heart was being stored in there, I did expect it to be a larger metaphor. But I _certainly_ didn't expect your metaphor for your heart to be something that you've, let's see here, wrapped in chains, covered with skulls, and-- is that, did you _actually_ get your evil skull-box enchanted to _glow red_ , Lambert?"

Lambert snickers, patting one of the grimacing, demonic skulls inlaid into the metal fondly on his way through unloading this year's jars into the chest. "Not as such. I got it enchanted so it only opened for me on conditions and would explode if anyone who _wasn't_ me cracked it, and apparently the glowing red's just part of the build of that kind of spell. Completes the look, though, doesn't it?"

"I didn't expect it at all, and yet just the same I can't say I'm fundamentally surprised that's what you'd call your heart. Why is your most important possession an evil glowing skull box, Lambert?"

"Not the _box_ , idiot, what's _in_ the box. Murder jar's in there," Lambert says, pausing for a moment to gesture towards it with one of his non-murder jars.

"A... murder jar," Aiden says, rolling the syllables out as he considers them. "Within a chest, within a box, within a jar, within a duck, within an egg-- all right, I see what you were doing there, now. So what's in the jar, then?"

"Murder, what else do you think?" Lambert says, giving it another pat. "Death to any and all creatures bedaft enough open it unprepared for its contents. S'long as they're warm-blooded, at least. Might work on cold-bloods, too, but I don't actually have a motive to start trial runs on lizard-genocide or whatever just to see if I _can_ , I'm not some fucking _sorcerer._ "

"Yet you have yourself a magical killing jar--"

"Not _magic_ ," he corrects firmly, " _Alchemy_."

"Ah," Aiden nods, "That does make more sense. What's the alchemical trick this time, then?"

"Suspended crystals of purified botulinum toxin," Lambert says, pausing a moment to feel that echo of savage satisfaction when he'd finally perfected the process. "Gives you botulism," he clarifies, at Aiden's blank look. "At this strength, might even take out a proper witcher in a day or two. Fuck if I know, still not a sorcerer. But you'd best believe I have to keep it Koschey'd layers deep best I can-- if there's any shit out there in the world more powerfully toxic than pure botulinum by-the-grain, I don't know it."

"I'd ask if the Cats taught ya, but if you missed on coturnism no way they bothered with that one. Fucking idiots, like assassinations always need to be showy. Slip a _mote_ from my jar into any human's meal and it's undetectable, lies in the blood for at least a half-day 'fore it starts to show, almost-fucking-impossible to track-back and plausibly deniable as a murder. Perfect poison," he concludes smugly. "And _no_ , you cannot have any."

"That's alchemy for you," Lambert pats his skull-box again, rubbing the head of that one inlay with the wonky eye fondly. "The magic of man ain't got _shit_ on some of the recipes the world's cooked up all on its own. And then all that obsession over those fancy-shit old bloodlines can get _fucked_ , because _anyone_ can learn a recipe if they actually bother to _look_."

"Huh," is all Aiden has to add. He's staring intently, which would be telling to his motives here if it'd been aimed at the skull box, but he's put all that quiet focus he can summon out of apparently-fucking-nowhere onto _Lambert_ , for some reason.

It always makes him uncomfortable all over when that look's turned on him. There's a sudden, prickling awareness of both Aiden and the extent of his own skin that'd make him wonder if it was an alpha thing or a predator thing except for the fact that he regularly faces off with both and they don't make him feel like he has to throw up the reflexive screen of words to make some room for himself within the space between them. A Cat thing, maybe, he considers, as he lets his mouth run cover. At least being still somewhat drunk makes the rambling come easy.

"I mean, it's _obvious_ , right? Or so you'd think anyway," He gestures with one of his non-murder jars towards Aiden, sloshing the contents. "By imparting the knowledge of how to _avoid_ botulism, my mom made me entirely aware of how to then _create_ botulism from the age of real-shit-young. I spent a lot of time staring into open jars and grappling with the fact that within it lay the potential to take lives as I saw fit for an eight year-old, that's for sure," he reminisces as he runs his fingers over the lids of the jars in his final check on their seals.

"You know, there was even this one time I got dragged off and switched 'cuz-- well, for the merchant it was just about being too there-and-tatterdemalion in the rich people part of the market, so it goes," he idly recounts, turning his attention to re-packing the bag with the year's-haul. "Most frustrating experience in my young life, I tell ya. Man was like 'boy, don't think we didn't see you staring, we know you were planning to steal that melon', and _inside_ what I wanted to say was _no, jackass, fuck off_ , I wasn't going to steal your _fucking_ melon, I was just trying to fucking internally debate the _ethical ramifications of murdering my father_."

Lambert waves a hand in the air, rolling his eyes. " 'Course, I couldn't give _that_ as a reason and then not leave precedent if I actually went and _did_ it, so I just went with the grit-and-took-it, but let me tell ya, if he'd broke the skin on it only steam would've come outta the cuts, I was so pissed at it all. All I ever really want out of life is to be left the fuck alone, y'know? Not like I can't find ways to entertain myself, even then." He grins up at Aiden.

Aiden's just staring back, though, and looking blank about it, which isn't even _better_ : Lambert still-yet-even-now has _no gods-damned clue_ what it means when he's giving Lambert that fucking look. "What," he snaps, dropping the grin for waspishness as he drops the jar back into the chest and glares right back. "I was dammed by a beta, everyone knew I was gonna present beta from the start. I had a lot of time for inner contemplation, that's how it goes."

"Is that really how it goes, for betas," Aiden says, faintly.

Lambert considers. "I mean, presumably, fuck if I know," he dismisses, with a shrug of one shoulder, turning his attention back to his jars. "Not like I've ever been anyone but me."

Aiden sits down beside him in a cross-legged sit, letting out a heavy breath. "And that's certainly a full-time job."

Lambert ducks his head to snicker wryly. "Is it _ever_ ," he agrees.

Aiden's quiet for a moment. "I really do wish you'd let me share the weight, some times."

Lambert pretends to consider it. Finally, he says "You know what? Sure."

Aiden goes blank again for a few seconds, then starts blinking rapidly. "I-- you? What, _really?_ "

"Really," Lambert deadpans, then shuts his re-filled pack and pushes it over. "And you can start with all these fucking jars."

Aiden's quiet again, but then he starts chuckling, pushing himself to stand and hefting the pack with him while Lambert gets his chest sealed and the wax back on. "I'm going to get into you eventually, you know," he says.

Lambert doesn't bother looking up from where he's sealing the corners on the wax back down with a thumb. "You were 'into me' last night, genius," he shoots back dryly. "You have been 'into me' repeatedly since, what, a handful of hours after we met?"

"From just about the very start, to be honest," Aiden says.

This time Lambert does look up to give him a proper glare. "Fuck off, I wasn't _that_ fucking easy."

"Ah, no," Aiden agrees amiably, holding a hand out to pull him up and pressing a kiss to his nose when he does, "I don't think anyone would consider you easy."

Lambert makes sure to clack his teeth together in a near-miss of Aiden's own nose when he pulls back and gets the expected laugh out of him. "That's the gods-damn right of it," he nods, "And that's how it's always gonna be."

Aiden's still smiling, adjusting the straps of the pack. "So why all the skulls?" he asks. "Is it really at such a risk to be stolen, with all those measures you take? Don't think I didn't notice you waited for an overcast day to lead me here, and I'll eat my own medallion if the way you took me in was your actual starting-route."

Lambert grins widely and doesn't bother to deny it. "It's keyed off my blood too, y'know. That box, that's how you get it open," he adds, tapping the chest it's within with his foot before moving to the end of it. He gestures down at himself in an open challenge. "So if you're gonna go for it, now's the time."

Aiden looks startled by his own laugh, shaking his head as he positions himself at the other end of the chest. "Even if I can't smell the lie on you, the very fact you're telling me means that like hell that's the whole story. I _know_ you, Lambert."

Lambert's grin widens in return, because Aiden's spotted it on the technically-true front: It _is_ keyed off his blood, provided it's been withdrawn, left to sediment and separate itself for at least an hour, and then only the clear top-layer of serum cracks the lock-- any of Lambert's blood taken fresh-from-the-source is in fact keyed to make the whole thing blow just like opening it without his serum would.

Admittedly, that precaution had less to do with paranoia and more to do with the fact that Lambert _also_ knows himself. (It's not like he'd ever been actually planning to _tell_ anyone about the murder jar, after all, it's that Aiden just kept _following_ him.) Specifically, he knows that when he gets that sort of all-over-mad he sometimes gets, he perhaps shouldn't trust himself with an instant access to mass-murder-in-a-can, lest he do something that after the fact he might find regrettable.

So the blood key had been less about security and more about the fact he fucking well should be taking the hour just to be sure the blood still flowing within him isn't coming in too hot. The skulls, though.

"Does not every great creator in this world face fact that their creations may outlive them, Aiden?" He pitches his tone like he's some toplofty tutor before snorting at his own pretension and dropping the act far more abruptly than the careful way the two of them lower the chest back into its hole. " 'Course I know how to hide shit, it was never about someone _finding_ it. But I sure-as-shit made it intending it to last; there's a very good chance it'll outlast me."

Aiden obligingly wanders around scuffing over the drag-tracks with a foot. Lambert busies himself with scooping dirt back over while he continues. "Some shift of earth a century after I kick it and some future-dumbass finds himself a mysterious treasure chest, right? And what would I do, _label_ it? Sure, great, because it's not like languages _keep going_ or anything. Who's to say they'll even use the same words? Or hell, the same language?"

"So I had myself the dilemma of conveying to _anyone_ who stumbles upon it that they should _not_ open that fucking box, because within it lies only certain death, the only difference being whether it's boom-quick or breathe-slow. And I figured, hey, you know what'll probably still be recognizable as 'bad shit in here', centuries after I'm gone?"

"Ah!" Aiden exclaims, nodding in sudden agreement. "I see! Yes, I suppose glowing red demon skulls are in a way a universal language."

Lambert snap-points. "And that's why I covered it in skulls. So my part there's done. If some dumb future motherfucker is stupid enough to actually try to open the fucking glowing demon skull box and they get dead during, I will be sleeping in my grave like a fucking baby because it's glowing red and _covered_ in skulls, _I don't know what else you possibly expected_."

Aiden smiles at that, but it's unusually subdued. Lambert goes for another eye-roll. "Now you want to ask me if I've actually used it," he fills in, because he can basically _see_ Aiden's mind working around how to ask the question strategically, and when he does that half the time Lambert ends up telling him _far_ more than he ever intended. Better to face the fire and only let him get off the single shot.

Aiden just nods, giving one last look to the green oak before turning back to him. They take up the same meandering pace they had on the way over, though Aiden at least has to be entirely sober by now.

"No," Lambert answers bluntly, "But I would've, I think."

"Your father?" Aiden asks quietly, and Lambert blinks in honest confusion, because when the fuck would _he_ have come up. He does a quick skim over his memory of their admittedly all-over conversation and vaguely remembers mentioning him when he was bitching about something-or-other to get some breathing room in. He scowls. Fucking stupid slip; that shit doesn't usually come up in his drunken rambles until it's generally too slurred to be coherent.

Well, he reflects, if Aiden's so fucking hungry for all of Lambert's business as usual, maybe some stark truth'll put him off the appetite. "No," he says again, coming to a halt. "I'd have used it at Kaer Morhen."

Aiden's sudden stop is much more abrupt, turning sharply to look at him. Lambert stares back, not entirely sure what he's looking for in Aiden's face.

Aiden's giving him the full force of that intent look again. He wonders if Aiden at least knows what he's looking for.

Aiden shifts closer to him and in the end, doesn't actually say anything at all. He shifts the strap to the bag and reaches out, taking Lambert's hand.

Lambert lets out a breath he wasn't conscious of taking and looks away. "It was only ever-- rumors," he says. Aiden once told him the biggest tell that he's being deceitful is that he starts talking too fast. Lambert would say it's the opposite; it's the unvarnished truth that tangles around his words like a bolas, lopping his sentences short and hobbling pace.

"After the massacre, y'know. Nobody really had the whole story. All sorts of rumors about. I just-- heard some shit about some sorcerer coalition. You know how they are, the fucking barracudas. Swarm around every wreck they think might give 'em an edge. So there was talk maybe this could be a fresh start, even a chance to build mutagens better. _Safer_ , even," he says, and not even an elf-craft dam could be able to keep the poisonous scorn out of that tone. He starts walking again, and Aiden keeps pace, staying quiet.

"Better, safer, sure. Bet they even would be, at the end. At the end," he repeats, watching the slow pass of the trees, "But for that, you'd need to start. And to start, well, you'd need-- you'd need to, to, I mean, I've _done_ shit like that, I develop shit on my own all the time, and it's all _about_ experimentation and fucking around until you find what works and making horrible, horrible failures and pressing on anyway. That's just-- how it's done."

"And for mutagens, well, they'd need subjects. And when picking subjects, well, you want as close to accurate conditions as you'd be using it for real as you'd get, and so I heard that and I thought about it and I thought about it and then I thought you know what? _No_."

He has to pause, then, use his free hand to go for his waterskin. Maybe it's all the talking that's making his mouth feel so dry. "So I got started on-- my first thought was, you know me, I'm just gonna fucking blow the place," he nods, then shakes his head. "But it'd be too-- if I was really ending it, _really_. If I was really ending it, for good, it couldn't be a-- I couldn't let it be anything that could possibly be a symbol, you know? Something solid you could rally around." He taps to his own medallion; the instructors had not been particularly subtle in pushing the pack symbolism's 'natural synergy' to their designations to a truly obnoxious degree.

"And then I thought, well, if those motherfuckers up the mountain are always so obsessed with their _fucking_ group meals, I'll _show_ 'em a group meal. Even if it didn't take out any of the witchers in on it, it'd wipe every visiting sorcerer, and even if they made it there'd be no way it was unscathed and like hell would they trust any witcher again. And it was-- it would have been a fading out over some presumed dumb-shit mistake of incompetence. The dignity death-rattle that'd keep anyone arrogant enough to think more mutagens was a good idea away from the ignoble associations of dying of fucking can-rot."

With how silent Aiden is keeping and moves in general, Lambert wouldn't even know he was here if he couldn't feel their linked hands. He thinks that might be why he's talking. "But as it turns out, the rumors were for shit, the coalition fell apart within the week outta those bullshit sorcerer politics, and none of the school mages survived anyway," he sighs, looking down to the forest floor now.

"So there I was, murder jar all tarted up and nobody even to massacre." He concludes, fussing with re-attaching his skin to his belt just so he'll have something to do other than looking at Aiden. "--So I say, but I. I honestly couldn't even tell you if I'd actually have done it, y'know?"

Aiden still hasn't said anything.

Aiden still hasn't let go of his hand.

Lambert breathes in and determinedly turns to meet his eyes. "But I wanted the option to know that I _could_."

Aiden's just giving him that look at full concentration. Lambert wonders, idly, that maybe it _was_ something the Cats taught him, what with how he apparently has no need to fucking blink.

Aiden blinks, and nods, and smiles. "Mm, I think I got that right away," he says, and it's downright conversational, a shot of normality straight into the last few minutes of halting monologue. "That's how you work in most other ways, after all. I mean," and he's grinning now, "Tell me you don't have a plan right this moment for how you'd kill me, even after all this time."

Lambert stays silent.

Aiden's eyes glisten. "Awwwww, _Lambert!"_ he coos, clutching his free hand over his heart.

"Shut up, shut the fuck up, I will dead-ass use my murder jar, _that's_ my fucking plan," Lambert fumes, shaking their hands apart and crossing his arms defensively in front of his chest. He has no gods-damn clue why _that_ late-formed realization makes him feel more naked in front of Aiden than all those times he'd literally been naked in front of him.

Aiden laughs, slinging an arm around his shoulder instead. "Why keep it around, then? Is it that hard to dispose of?"

Lambert gives Aiden a look of affront. "Who says I gotta dispose of it? I made it, it's _mine._ "

"It just seems like a lot of responsibility to handle to me," Aiden muses. "A murder jar of one's own."

"Security, more like," Lambert corrects. "I may never be more than what I am, but at least I have a _fucking_ murder jar that no human or beast or _anything_ with a nervous system could fucking survive if I needed them dead," he finishes, and doesn't bother to temper the viciousness of his satisfaction.

"So I have that. Fuck off with that face, I know gods-damn well it's some weird headcase security blanket," he snaps towards Aiden crossly. "It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to make me feel _better_."

Aiden just hums at that, making the blank face again. "What," Lambert snaps, knocking his head against Aiden's shoulder. "What's that supposed to mean."

"Nothing bad, love. It's just that there's always something more there in you that surprises me." He smiles. "I don't think I'll ever get tired of it."

"Hah! Maybe you _should_ try wintering with me, then. I have it on good authority I'm _exhausting_."

"I would, you know," Aiden says, squeezing his shoulder. "Anywhere, if it was with you."

Lambert eyes him suspiciously. "Is that a _threat_."

Aiden laughs, loud and bright. "Ah, Lambert. No, here's your threat: I got you to open your legs for me, I've gotten you to open your mind for me, I'll get you to open your heart for me one day. Even if I have to pass through the eye of the needle to do it." He reaches over to pat Lambert's chest, grinning like a challenge.

Lambert considers this. It doesn't take long.

"No, you will fucking well not," he concludes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cliff notes for ya:
> 
> lambert: slap my hand away when i reach, will you? well you can't slap SHIT if i _cut my own hand off_  
>  aiden: sweetheart there are maybe better emotional tactics  
> lambert, holding an axe: no it's the hand the hand's got to go
> 
> and footnotes! botulinum toxin is possibly the nastiest substance on earth by grain, and entirely feasible to create through faulty canning, though obviously not at bio-terrorism strength on its own. it's particularly known for just how very little you need to kill someone-- a single gram could take out over a million people, were it distributed properly. (well, i say properly....) yet it is also what we use to make botox!
> 
> hilariously, because it is both botox and, uhhhhh, an incredibly nasty and potent weapon in malicious hands, literally the only thing we know about the facility which the tiny scraping of botulinum is extracted to make usa supplies of the stuff is that it is (allegedly) somewhere in the continental united states; its actual location is considered a literal state secret.
> 
> why was lambert staring at a melon? melon is one of the only fruits (well, berries) you should _never, ever_ attempt to can, because it is just about the only common fruit that doesn't have the acidity to kill the toxin from developing. in fact, it's my own little unverified theory that the reason the usa weirdly just up and doesn't use melon as a candy flavor like eastern cultures do is because we tried out canning melon and ended up accidentally traumatizing ourselves with it so bad it became one of those taboos so taken for granted we don't even realize it's there.
> 
> kobold alloy is my lil nerd joke for the material of lambert's chest-- it didn't come up in fic but there's some cobalt-chromium in it used for rust. the word cobalt itself actually has its origins in kobold, as it was considered a very tricksy and somewhat risky nuisance.


	8. Kill-bite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: lamboy? angy.

"Lambert, will you-- Lambert, please, please just _slow down_ , I'm certain we could solve this if you'll just tell me what she _said_ \--"

Aiden's pleas had bled from exasperated to perplexed to concerned and into anxious now as he's trailed Lambert on his straight line all the way back to the inn. It's only finally cut off by the vicious slam of the door to the room they'd gotten in Aiden's face, hard enough to jar something off-kilter and leave Aiden rattling at the knob in an attempt to force it back open without taking the whole door off. Lambert hadn't specifically intended that by the slam, but he'll take it.

He'll take anything right fucking now, he'll take his _Trials_ again right now, so long as it means he's getting _out of here_ and _away_. He forgoes his usual painstaking arrangement of essentials for just grabbing them and jamming them into his bags in jumbled handfuls, scattering his whetstone and stropping compounds to the floor. He swears loudly but leaves them there-- it's not like there's anything particularly irreplaceable about a rock and some tins.

It's hard to tell what's the pounding in his ears and Aiden pounding at the door, his voice a background annoyance ratcheting faster and louder. The splintering noise of a door being forced bodily back into working alignment is unmistakable, though, and Lambert pauses in his shit-but-quick packing to turn, face already contorted in a snarl. There's a push swinging it wide before it gives up the ghost and lists halfway off of its hinges. It opens on Aiden looking as if he's just caught an Aard to the face, pale and wide-eyed and bewildered.

"Stop fucking _following_ me," Lambert demands, and this time he _means it_.

Aiden assesses the tossed-over room and Lambert's bag on the bed with a quick flick of his eyes, presses his lips together, and puts both hands up palms-out in open supplication like most alphas _never_ do and Aiden does _all the time_ like Lambert's some sort of fucking _animal_ to be soothed. He licks his lips. "Sweetheart, we're sharing--" he starts.

"Don't you _fucking call me that_ ," Lambert spits, and in one move drops to scoop up the nearest fallen tin and hurls it straight at Aiden for good measure.

Aiden bats it out of the way with a hand without blinking or looking away, dislodging the top in the process in a brilliant mid-air spray of viridian powder he doesn't even seem to register. "Sorry, I'm sorry-- just, Lambert, love, please just--"

Lambert goes for another tin on the floor and throws it too, but the blinding rage doesn't do much for his aim, missing Aiden by an arms-width and exploding on the wall in a similarly dramatic red cloud of jeweller's rouge. "Don't you fucking call me that _either!"_

Aiden's mouth snaps shut, and he looks stricken like Lambert's tin had struck after all and it'd _hurt_ , which just makes Lambert even fucking angrier because how _dare he_ , how _fucking dare he_.

"How _fucking dare you_ ," Lambert seethes, slamming his fist down on the table hard enough to rattle the whole thing. "How fucking-- you _know_ you only got, got _away_ with calling me that because I thought it was just a fucking _joke_ at first, you _knew that_ and you _let it get enmired_ until it was too late for me to even make you stop without talking about--" he can find many, _many_ words for the rest of his problem, but he doesn't have the words for this, and Aiden _knew that_ , and Aiden _used that_ , and Aiden _took advantage of that_ and _how fucking dare he look hurt now_.

"You _knew_ I wouldn't and you _used it against me_ ," he accuses, and he might be yelling now, it's hard to hear himself over the tempest flooding through him full-body, dashing itself against every inside-edge of him. "You go around pretending like you aren't _just some other shitty alpha_ who gets a fucking _kick_ out of, of cornering people into always doing what you _fucking want_ , like just because you're _manipulative_ about it instead of using your _compulsion_ or your _fists_ \--"

He gives up on taking shit from the floor and plunges his hand to grope blindly in his bag so he can throw more things at Aiden to punctuate the acid-burn invective. "It'd be better, _it'd be fucking better_ , do you hear me? It'd be better if you'd _used your fucking fists_ than what you've been _doing to me!!"_

It ends on an howl, and there's a thudding on the adjoining wall of a beating fist and a brusque demand that they keep it down. " _YOU shut the FUCK UP_ ," Lambert roars, turning to slam his foot against the wall in retaliation and with one hit smashing his leg right through the flimsy wood-boards. There's a shriek and a clatter of a human fleeing, again unintentional but again what he'll take.

He wrenches his leg from the splintered hole in the wood, heedless of the blood he's smearing over it from the one thick splinter that'd ended up embedded in his calf. Lambert grasps it and yanks it out and then throws it at Aiden too for good measure.

"All I've _ever_ wanted is to just be left alone. All I ever wanted from _anyone_ was that they leave me the _fuck alone!!_ And it was working, it was _working_ , but then _you_ , you just never, you won't ever _leave me alone_ and you've ruined my, my this, my own whole gods-damned life because you just _fucking! won't! leave! me! alone!"_

Aiden's started breathing rapidly too, hands still up and useless. "Lambert," he tries, "I'm not going to leave you."

"I _know_ ," Lambert grinds out in a way that hurts his throat, striding back towards his bag. "That's my _fucking problem_. Do you hear me!? _You're my fucking problem!!"_

"Lambert," Aiden tries again, pleading. He takes a step forward and Lambert reacts on instinct.

The buckle-knife shoots right past Aiden's head, aimed close enough so he'll feel the current it leaves in the air as it passes, and embeds itself into the door frame behind him with a solid thunk.

For a moment, everything freezes. They're both in wide-eyed shock, because Lambert casually throws things at Aiden almost as often as he tosses over his insults, but like with the insults it's never been shit he thought could actually _harm_ until--

Oh, Lambert thinks, filling with a horrible certainty that paradoxically feels like something vital within him is draining into the hole opened up in his stomach. This is why he was always so sure it'd be best to never get tied to anything.

He must have known, in that instinctual, animal way of him. He must have had that sense that keeps beasts from predating on those things that look so tempting, decked out like they are in those bright and beautiful colors. He must have known that reaching out for something like that is only going to hurt. That if he'd never tied himself to anyone, he'd never have to face it when he made it all unravel.

For all that he'd always insisted otherwise, everything with Aiden had been easy, suspiciously easy, always too fucking easy between them. That'd been the appeal he'd had, he knows. Easy to fuck, easy to shoot the shit with, and always, always so fucking easy to push into his pace for all of Lambert's bullshit fucking show like it isn't.

So of course the first thing Lambert actually does on his own for this thing that's always been so easy between them is to suddenly make it all so fucking _hard_.

And maybe it's better, that it's ending like this.

And maybe his heart really is in his strongbox, and it's better to just wrench it open and let it all explode here and now than let this _fucking toxin_ keep making its way deeper and deeper inside him.

"Just go," he says, the brief respite from the firestorm of his rage leaving him alone in its desolate ashes. "Just--"

"No," Aiden says.

"Then I'm going," Lambert says, hoisting his bag, because he doesn't care that he's not done packing, it's not like he even keeps shit on him that he'd be unwilling to lose.

"I'm going, I'm leaving, I'm--" he pushes past Aiden, braced for resistance, and when he doesn't get any it conversely makes him mad enough again to twist a hand in Aiden's tunic and shove the man against the wall to snarl in his face. "And don't-- don't you dare, _don't you fucking dare."_

Lambert storms to the downstairs of the inn, which had apparently managed to clear itself out in the meantime, probably when the breaking-things started.

He stops only to undo the spring-trap on his coin purse one-handed, nearly snap-catching his own fingers on it because it seems like the only fine motor movements he can handle at the moment are harsh, full-arm jabs and jerks, and empties its whole contents onto the counter.

It's more than anyone'd need for the necessary repairs, but it's not like money fucking matters, anyway. Maybe he'll do an about-face and skip Kaer Morhen this year, ride down to warmer climes to spend the season on his own in the woods. It's not like it'd be the first time.

Aiden catches up to him just out of the village, sprinting and carrying his own pack looking hastily over-stuffed.

Lambert hisses when he sees him, putting more purpose into his stride as he continues to hiss to the air "I said go away! Stop _following_ me!"

"I won't," Aiden says, and it sounds like he's trying to make it an assurance, like saying it isn't just about jabbing his fucking claws into Lambert deeper. "Lambert, I won't."

_"Leave me alone!"_ Lambert screams, alight with so much rage it burns in his throat, and goes for his bag, grabbing the first dark jar he can reach so he can hurl it at Aiden. "Leave me _alone_ _leave mealoneleavemetheFUCK--"_

Aiden catches the first jar without breaking his gaze, dropping it to the grass as he continues to trail after, and lets the next one sail over his head and shatter against a tree in a burst of liquid and the acrid scent of vinegar on Lambert's already fight-keyed senses.

"Please," is all Aiden says, eyes wide and wet. "Please, just listen to me. Please, Lambert, let me listen."

And it's enough to leave Lambert in the ashes again, the third jar dropping with a thud from his suddenly nerve-less fingers. "I can't," Lambert says, and it's like he's pleading too. "Everyone knows a-- Aiden, I can't, I can't. _I can't_."

"Please," Aiden repeats. "Please, Lambert. That's all I want. That's the only thing I want."

Lambert sags, then lists to the side, off the road and up to press his back to the nearest tree and press his eyes shut. He realizes, distantly, that his leg hurts, shifting his weight.

And he gets like this, sometimes. Times where he's just so fucking tired of fighting, with the world and with his wants, even if at this point in his life he's not sure he knows if there's any other way inside him for him to be.

But sometimes he just gets so _tired_.

"All right," he says, sunk deep into the sudden exhaustion. He keeps his eyes closed. "All right."

* * *

In the end, they walk side-by-side a ways, after Aiden's trotted back to pick up the unbroken jar and return it to him without comment. They set up a small camp, their bedrolls side-by-side, even though it's still mid-day.

In the end, he and Aiden lay on the bedrolls and Aiden wraps all his limbs around Lambert to cling to him like a spider, the shakiness of his clear relief no impediment to how adamantly he cements Lambert to him. Aiden's pressing Lambert's face into his neck, where he has to know those scent-glands are that Lambert'll never smell, so what's even the _point_.

It's a place to start, and once he's started it's all coming out of him, nonsensical stuttered fragments of everything that's been getting heavier and heavier to bear, things that have grown so big and overpowering that all the refusal to face them in the world couldn't stop him from seeing them no matter how hard he's tried.

"--And they can all smell who I fucked last night _on me_ because _yeah_ , _asshole_ , I might not fucking be able to smell your, your _pointless fucking scent marking_ but I _know_ you've been fucking doing it because everyone else, everyone _fucking_ else knows--"

"I'm sorry," Aiden says softly. "It's not on purpose."

"--and they look at me and they _know_ , and they're, you're an _alpha_ , they're _always_ going to take a look at you but you're always, always looking at _me_ and then _they_ look at me and why do you think I try to spend all my time fucking _alone_ \--"

"I know," Aiden says. He's started rubbing small circles into Lambert's back, like he does when Lambert's struggling through the dregs of toxicity. "I'm sorry. I couldn't tell how much their attention bothered you."

"--And don't pretend you wouldn't fucking-- fucking _trade up_ the moment you found someone who didn't need _false fucking slick_ to have anything like _normal_ sex with you--"

"I wouldn't," Aiden says. "Lambert, I wouldn't. I don't care how we have sex. I wouldn't care if you never wanted to have sex, but I don't want your reason for that to be because you think what we have isn't normal."

"It isn't," Lambert chokes on a sob.

"I know," Aiden agrees, pulling him in closer and punctuating his words with soothing noises. "But it's not wrong, Lambert. It's not. It's just not normal."

"--then you can tell that to the fucking, that _fucking withered hag omega_ who called me _shameless_ not because of anything I _fucking said_ but just, just because she could _smell_ \--"

"I'm sorry, Lambert." Aiden says. "I'm sorry that happened."

"--and I never even cared about being shameless before, I never even cared, but if I'm going to be shameless, it should be because I fucking _want_ to be. Not for just-- not just because I fucking _want_."

"I know," Aiden says, pressing his nose down on the top of Lambert's head, his voice cracked with the force of the sentiment. "You're right. I'm sorry people are like that to you. I wish so much they weren't."

"I don't need you. I'm fine on my own," Lambert finally gasps out into Aiden's neck as he clutches him tighter. "I've always been-- I don't, you fucker, I don't need anyone."

"I know, love," Aiden hums, pressing a kiss to his head now. "I never once doubted it. But I want you, Lambert. I want what we have. And you can let yourself want it too, even though you don't need me and you don't have to."

Lambert doesn't answer that for a long time, lips pressed tight and eyes screwed shut and feeling like he'll never be anything but misery ever again.

"I can't," he whispers tautly into the dark space made against the divot of Aiden's collarbone, fingers tightening in his tunic hard enough to stretch the fabric. "I can't."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> footnotes:  
> [viridian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium\(III\)_oxide)  
> [jeweler's rouge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron\(III\)_oxide)


	9. +1 Consume

After, when it's started getting cool and dark, Aiden sits Lambert up, wraps his bedroll around Lambert like a cloak, and makes him tea.

Lambert holds the dented tin mug in both hands and lets the warmth of it suffuse in his palms as he stares into the shit-terrible job Aiden's done at the fire while Aiden starts sorting through their packs and putting the jumbled mess back into the semblance of order.

He'd managed to grab almost all of the things Lambert had left behind before he'd run after him, and as a pleasant surprise even managed to snag a fair amount of his coin back. Aiden hands it over without counting it out, so Lambert does so himself as he sets the tea aside for a moment and fishes out his coin purse.

Lambert frowns as he totals the amount. "You left a downright egregious tip just for covering some piddling damages to some wood, Aiden," he criticizes, then frowns further and clears his throat as he scoops the coin back in and sets about resetting the clasp's spring-trap. Is that hoarse, thready thing really his voice? "The stuff _literally_ grows on trees."

"Ah-- well, I suppose there was also the emotional damages to cover," Aiden says, not looking up from where he's folding his chemise. "Lambert," Aiden admonishes at Lambert's derisive noise in response, "He was _crying_ , you know. The man from the next-over room that you kicked through."

Lambert repeats his derisive noise, but with emphasis, and Aiden laughs, shaking his head. It's quiet for a while as dusk diffuses into dark, the only noises the soft shuffles and clinks of things being arranged to best fit. After Aiden's tied his bag up and done the buttons on Lambert's, he pats them both, pushes them to the side, and wanders over to sit next to Lambert and gaze into the fire too. Fucking good luck there, Lambert supposes, because it's not like he himself has any idea of what he's been looking for within it for the past hour.

Aiden takes the cold mug of undrunk tea from Lambert's unresisting hands, fusses with the bedroll he's left cocooned around Lambert until it's like one of those dumb sheet-capes he prefers for himself post-coitally (when they're somewhere with sheets), and tries to hand him back his buckle knife.

Lambert intakes a sudden, stuttering breath at the sight of it. He'd thought Aiden left it embedded in the door-frame. He sort of wishes Aiden had just left it there, because the simple sight of it in Aiden's hand makes his stomach feel like he just necked three potions and he didn't even get any of the worthwhile parts of it for doing so.

He doesn't take the knife. Aiden tries to hand it to him again, and Lambert instead shoots his hand out to grab Aiden's wrist in a tight-knuckled grip he immediately loosens to a limp circle of fingers with a steady release of his breath.

He looks into Aiden's eyes for what feels like the first time in ages, but it's important to be meeting his eyes. It's not like he has any gods-damn clue on how to do any of this, but he _feels_ like it's important for what he's trying to say to Aiden that he's meeting his eyes, and maybe it feels sort of important to Lambert, too.

"Aiden, I didn't--" he starts, and abruptly corrects, "I mean, I did. I did, but I shouldn't've-- I wouldn't--" and he has to grind to a halt, and grind seems to really be the word for it because even talking around the words he's not saying feels like a grater's being run slowly all over his skin. He swallows and tries to continue, because this is _important_.

"Or-- I can't say I wouldn't, because I did," he forces out, the admission spiking and jagged. "But I-- Aiden, I never want to--" he comes to another rasping halt, pressing his eyes shut tight enough to hurt before opening them again, gaze shifting frenetically from one of Aiden's fire-slitted pupil to the other in rapid darts. "But I can't say I never, because I did. But I. I--"

Lambert's usual poisoned well of words is coming up empty. He knows he should be making promises, but he can't think of a single promise he could actually trust himself to make. For some reason that _hurts_ so much deeper inside him than any actual wound has gotten, which then just makes him feel worse because he's sitting here sickened by his own fundamental failings and he hasn't even the right to.

Aiden calmly removes Lambert's lax grip around his wrist and turns the hand in his own palm-up. He presses the knife there, curling Lambert's slackened fingers around it. "I think we can consider it extenuating circumstances, love," he says, his tone as delicate as his choice of euphemism.

Lambert swallows dryly once, twice. He drops his eyes down to the blade in his palm. It's almost insulting, how it looks just the same as it always has, like something fundamental about it hadn't been forever changed. "Still," he tries, because this is _important_. "Still. Aiden, I-- I'm sorry." It's all he can offer.

"Mm," Aiden nods. "I accept your apology. And I'm sorry, too. I knew you were frazzled, and I kept pressing you anyway."

Lambert glances back up, squinting. " 'Frazzled', fuck you," he snipes back on instinct, then pauses.

Aiden just smiles at him encouragingly, giving his hand a final squeeze before dropping it and settling back next to him, pressing their arms together. "Out of sorts, then. Does that please your highness?"

It really doesn't, because maybe he _is_ the sort, and that's the whole problem.

Lambert sets the knife to the side of him, where his gambeson has been folded. He breathes in.

"My dad was an alpha," Lambert says abruptly. He doesn't really have to clarify what his mother was. You don't tend to get a beta out of normal alpha coupling.

Aiden doesn't respond. Doesn't look particularly surprised, either. He just waits, pressed next to Lambert.

"He was a shit one, you know," Lambert continues quietly, turning his gaze back to the there-gone flame-flickers at the height of the fire. "Alpha and husband and _person_ and-- and dad. And no one's gonna leave something as fragile as an omega to that shit an alpha, so-- he had to, you know. Ended up settling for my mom, so he was already-- at that point."

He takes another breath. "And, well, clearly they somehow managed to fuck at whatever right phase of fucking blood moon was needed to get alpha-pregnant without a heat. And you know how I-- turned out. And the second try at getting it right never took. I mean," he scrubs a hand over his face and brings his knees up tight to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. He doesn't look at Aiden. "You know how alpha and beta couplings are. Everyone knows there's no future in 'em."

"There's a lot of things here you're telling me I know that I fundamentally don't agree with, Lambert," is all Aiden says in response, gentle.

Lambert slumps further over his knees, pressing the heels of his palms hard over his eyes. "I fucking _know_ ," he bites out, because sounding resentful is always better than sounding hopeless. "And I don't know what-- what I'm supposed to _do_ about it."

"I mean, I've given you suggestions," Aiden offers conversationally with a small, wry smile. "Explicit ones, not to mention repeatedly."

Lambert lifts his hands from his face so Aiden can see him roll his eyes pointedly. "Yeah, _thanks_ , asshole, I suppose I should've just _magically fucking discerned_ how much of the bullshit you spout _all the time_ was supposed to be _actually genuine_."

Aiden reaches out, pressing a hilt-roughened palm to his face without pressure. He waits for Lambert to slowly, haltingly meet his eyes before he says "I haven't lied to you, Lambert. Not once."

Lambert stares back into his eyes wordlessly for almost a full minute, then makes a strangled noise in his throat and buries his face in his knees, curling even more into himself.

Aiden lets him, shifting his hand to Lambert's shoulders and slipping under the bedroll so he can rub over them in slow movements. "It's all right," he hums soothingly. "I know it's a lot."

Lambert makes another throat-noise, this one hopefully read as affirmation.

After an indeterminate while and the constant, steady pattern of Aiden's hand, he finally feels himself loosening enough to lift his head up to peek. Aiden doesn't stop his motions, but he smiles down at him encouragingly.

"You know," he says, "We can start small."

That manages to get Lambert's entire head up, reared in an honest affront. "What," he snaps, "What about _any_ of this could _possibly_ be defined as _small--_ "

"Well," Aiden continues placidly, and Lambert's words die off. "All this time we've been together, you've been trying to figure out what I wanted from you."

Lambert waits, eyeing him suspiciously.

"And if you really want to know, Lambert," Aiden says, eyes crinkling, "You _can_ always just ask."

"I've _asked_ ," Lambert stresses peevishly.

"Lambert," Aiden says dryly, leaning to the side to rest their heads together, " _Believe me_. You have never once asked."

Lambert presses his lips together, because he's sifting through his memories on that front and all right, maybe he hadn't been that direct in _particular_.

"Fucking-- _fine,"_ Lambert says, latching on to his frustration so he can get it out before he starts overthinking it and doesn't say anything at all. "Aiden. What do you _want_ from me?"

Then Aiden goes _silent_ , and Lambert is about to grab something to hurl at him, _yes even though they're literally pressed together_ , when he says "The very first time we met, you looked me in the eyes and you said: try me."

Lambert pauses, thrown off. "You remember that?"

Aiden turns his head to look at Lambert incredulously. "Lambert, you held a knife to my neck! It was very memorable!"

Lambert frowns, skimming briefly over the memories from his own perspective. "At your neck," he corrects.

"Yes, yes," Aiden flaps a hand at him. "My point is: that's it. That's all I ask. All I've ever asked, honestly. All I will ask. And I'll keep following you without, and I'll keep fucking you without, if that's what you really want, but I won't stop asking."

Lambert blinks. "Asking for what?"

"Try me," Aiden asks.

Lambert breathes in. He doesn't get a read off of Aiden's scent. Of course he doesn't, he's a beta. Always has been. Always will be.

Aiden reaches out to take his hand, lacing their fingers together as he leans in so their eyes can meet.

"Try me," he repeats, soft.

It's quiet for a long, long time.

"...All right," Lambert finally whispers in the shared breath between them. "I'll try."

Aiden smiles and holds his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cliff notes for ya:  
> will i ever stop basing my lambert romance fics on the inherent hilarity of a man being startlingly perceptive in most avenues of life and startlingly fucking dense in his personal one? i could not say, dear reader. will i ever stop laughing my ass off literally every fucking time i stare at [this picture](http://www.picshag.com/pics/092009/you-can-do-it-big.jpg) for too long? it doesn't look _promising_.
> 
> thank you for coming along with me on this ride! i think we've all learned a valuable lesson here, and that lesson is _make sure you have your pacing already hashed before you try to pull a "next time", learn from my mistakes_. I hope you got as much of a kick as going into the sex universe and, uh, spending the whole time on chemical compositions and fairy tale metaphors instead as I did!!
> 
> in answer to some potential questions i could see coming up:  
> q: does aiden live in this au?  
> a: sure! things are already changed up! in your mind kingdom, _you make the rules_!
> 
> q: is this the same aiden from denial?  
> a: yes and no! i'd consider denial's aiden to me as a full-on oc- he's fully formed, like i would an rp character, with some clear definites that are unique to himself. while i brought over denial aiden's diction habits and larger personality, i specifically wrote this one less like an oc and more like a cipher. you could slot in denial aiden and he'd fit, _or_ you could fill in your own definites that aren't tied to him. i won't mind at all, because that's what i was going for!
> 
> q: are you ever going to write the sex in this sex universe?  
> a: ehhhh, maybe, but probably not. if i DID, however, i absolutely _would_ be calling it "intents" (intense), because i am so funny, _by god_ am i so _fucking funny_.
> 
> and to all the commenters who came along with me: you were an incredible motivation, and i loved hearing from each and every one of you! Shine bright, you jewels in my firmament.

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked my fic, please remember to leave kudos! 
> 
> (｡òᴗ-)7✧ i like seeing who liked my stuff.


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